Oral Answers to Questions

TRANSPORT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Dartford River Crossing

Adam Holloway: What estimate she has made of the average delay caused by congestion to commuters and commercial vehicles using the Dartford river crossing.

Rosie Winterton: The estimated delay affecting vehicles travelling the five miles between the A13 north of the river and the A2 to the south using the Dartford river crossing is about three minutes northbound and two minutes southbound. That is the average for the period between 6am and 8pm; delays at peak times are longer.

Adam Holloway: I think my constituents would agree with the Minister that delays at peak times are considerably longer. That marvellous, comfortable picture does not reflect what is a daily reality for thousands of them. I wonder when the Minister will do something to alleviate the daily misery and cost incurred by millions of people who spend, I would guess, hundreds of thousands of hours each year sitting in traffic jams because of the tolls.

Rosie Winterton: Obviously, congestion at peak times is an issue, but all the evidence suggests that without the tolls it would be even worse. The Dartford crossing is a vital part of the national road network, and is used by about 150,000 vehicles every day. In the longer term the answer may be a new crossing, which is why we have commissioned a study.

Andrew MacKinlay: My constituents, and those living opposite us in Dartford, look forward to the long-promised concessions for our communities to which the Government have committed themselves in respect of the toll, but may I urge my right hon. Friend to act on the second crossing? United Kingdom Ltd demands—needs—an opportunity to gain access to the channel ports and the north of our country, not just via the Dartford crossing but via a crossing on the Thames estuary east of Dartford. The sooner the Government address that need, the better it will be for the commerce of the United Kingdom as well as the minimisation of congestion and pollution in Dartford and Thurrock.

Rosie Winterton: I am probably more aware than most of the strength of my hon. Friend's feeling about discounts for local residents. He has certainly pressed his case very effectively. As for the options for a new crossing, as I have said, a study is being conducted, and we expect a report at about the end of the year.

David Evennett: I noted the Minister's response to my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), but does she consider that the proposed local discount scheme is fair to my constituents and the other residents of east Bexley who are not to be included in it, given that they live closer to the Dartford crossing than some Dartford and Thurrock residents? Or is this just another example of Bexley being let down by Labour?

Rosie Winterton: We set out the reasons for our proposals in our consultation document. As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, we propose to base the scheme on the boundaries of the two local authority areas on either side of the crossing, as they include the most affected locations. Our aim is to adopt an approach that is proportionate and provides clarity on eligibility. I shall announce our conclusions shortly, following the consultation.

Michael Fallon: Is it not a strange coincidence that both councils nearest to the bridge where residents will travel free happen to be in marginal Labour constituencies? Other commuters in Kent who live just as close to the bridge will now have to pay higher tolls.

Rosie Winterton: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman should want to make a party-political point out of a very serious issue. I should also point out that the two councils involved are Conservative controlled.

Julian Brazier: The Minister is referring to county councils, whereas my hon. Friend was referring to marginal parliamentary constituencies. There is an obvious distinction.
	The study that the Minister has announced is welcome, but will it include the Thames Gateway expansion plans and, more specifically, the slightly confusingly named Thames Gateway port expansion plans? When the port is redeveloped—as I assume it will be—it will generate a large amount of HGV traffic.

Rosie Winterton: As I said, the study that is looking at the options will report by the end of the year, at which point we will be able to give more details about the way forward.

Roads (North-West)

Nicholas Winterton: What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the road infrastructure in the north-west of England, with particular reference to south Manchester and north-east Cheshire.

Tom Harris: We are working closely with regional partners and local authorities to deliver improvements to the whole of the north-west transport network, including the road infrastructure.

Nicholas Winterton: Does the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect, accept that my constituency of Macclesfield in north-east Cheshire does not receive a fair allocation of resources for road infrastructure improvement? Does he agree that improved road infrastructure can lead to increased economic development and activity and can reduce carbon emissions in the community? Will he look at the situation in south Manchester and north-east Cheshire to see whether a fairer allocation of resources can be provided?

Tom Harris: Obviously I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I agree that good road infrastructure is essential to the health of the economy and of the environment, but, as he will probably know, road spending in the north-west has more than doubled since 2000. The south-east Manchester multimodal study, commissioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), has come up with possible solutions for the south-east Manchester relief road. That is a very expensive project—costing possibly between £700 million and £1 billion—and it cannot go ahead as a single scheme. We are looking at progressing parts of that scheme in phases. He will know that a crucial part of that is the Poynton bypass in his constituency. We are working very hard with all representatives in the local area to come up with an affordable proposition. But to claim that the Government have not spent enough money on road infrastructure in his constituency, or anywhere else in the country, would be false.

Andrew Stunell: The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter) and I are the parliamentary shareholders in the road scheme to which the Minister refers, which would complete the road network in my constituency in particular. Is he now in a position to take up the offer that his predecessor made to visit the site and to see what is needed to relieve congestion and pollution in my constituency?

Tom Harris: I am always happy to visit the constituency of any hon. Member. If he wishes to make a formal invitation to my private office, I shall be more than happy to consider it. I hope that, during such a visit, he will find that the resources invested in transport infrastructure in the north-west and other parts of the country have well exceeded those of all our predecessor Governments.

Mark Hunter: Does the Minister understand the very real frustration of residents in my constituency who are concerned about the apparent lack of progress on the completion of the A555 relief road? Does he further understand that the unique factor in the completion of the scheme is that the middle section was built many years ago and simply needs connecting at each end? Without that completion, it will be a permanent testimony to the folly of short-term transport planning.

Tom Harris: Of course I understand the frustration felt by constituents and MPs on both sides of the House when a particularly important road scheme is not progressed according to the time scale that we originally expected. As the Government, we have to make sure that whenever a road scheme is progressed, it delivers best value for money. Regardless of the record amounts of money that the Government are investing in road infrastructure, we have to make sure that every pound is well spent. I notice that the transport plans issued by the hon. Gentleman's party today do not offer much extra money on top of what we have already offered.

Integrated Transport Authorities

John Leech: What assessment her Department has made of the effects on local government accountability of extending voting rights to all members of integrated transport authorities.

Rosie Winterton: The Local Transport Bill allows local authorities to devise proposals on the membership of integrated transport authorities in their areas. However, a majority of each ITA's members must be elected councillors. Authorities would also be able to propose whether non-elected ITA members have voting rights.

John Leech: Does the Minister accept that the only way to ensure real democratic accountability and to avoid the possibility of the political gerrymandering of ITAs is to deprive non-elected members of any voting rights?

Rosie Winterton: I do not think that that is the way forward. Under the Bill, ITAs determine locally whether they want to have people other than elected members on the authorities and, if so, whether they have voting rights. We believe that that is the right approach to enable, for example, passenger or other representation on ITAs. I have discussed that with passenger transport executives, and the hon. Gentleman should take a slightly broader approach.

John Grogan: Will my right hon. Friend press on strongly with her plans for integrated transport authorities? They are exciting real enthusiasm in Selby with the prospect of MetroCards, which could enable travel across the whole of west Yorkshire.

Rosie Winterton: I thank my hon. Friend for that encouragement. I know that he, unlike the Opposition, has been a great supporter of what we are trying to do in the Local Transport Bill, particularly to enable greater improvements to our bus services. I thank him for his support.

Climate Change

Mark Lazarowicz: What account she takes of climate change in formulating transport policy; and if she will make a statement.

Ruth Kelly: We need to move from a fuel-intensive economy to one that is low carbon. That is why climate change is now one of the five overarching goals of transport policy. It is also why we take account of the cost of carbon when making policy decisions, and why we are looking at many further options for reducing transport emissions.

Mark Lazarowicz: I welcome what the Secretary of State has to say, but is that commitment not somewhat undermined by the Government's commitment to airport expansion? Given that their own Sustainable Development Commission has recently called for a fundamental review of the air transport White Paper and for decisions on Stansted and Heathrow to be put on hold until that happens, would it not make sense for them to rethink their position? After all, the current trend in fuel prices may well do more to restrain air travel than anything that we do in our legislation. Should we not have a rethink along the lines called for by the commission?

Ruth Kelly: I know how committed my hon. Friend is to the idea that the UK should play a full role in combating climate change, and I agree. The question for the House is: is combating climate change and reducing carbon dioxide emissions overall, across all sectors of the economy, compatible with the growing aviation sector? I and the Government believe that it is, and we are championing in Europe a European emissions trading scheme whereby any increase in aviation emissions above the 2004-06 base level would have to be matched one for one by a reduction in carbon emissions elsewhere in the European economy, paid for by the aviation sector. In that way, not only do we help to push forward with our climate change objectives; we do so in a way that is compatible with future economic growth.

Greg Knight: When the Secretary of State formulates transport policy, will she also take into account the report by Professor David Newbury of Cambridge university, which said that if motorists were obliged to pay the true cost of the effect that vehicles have on the environment, they would be paying taxes at less than half the rate they are currently paying? In the light of this information, will the Secretary of State therefore now abandon her unpopular and misguided plan to introduce local charging schemes in the interest not only of fairness, but—because we care about her—of saving her own seat?

Ruth Kelly: I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman cares so much about my electoral prospects in Bolton, West. I have to think about how we combat climate change in a way that, yes, is compatible with economic growth but that also helps us to cut congestion. He points to the rate of fuel tax and puts that in the context of the carbon cost, but we also have to think about the impact of traffic on the roads, which undermines economic growth, too. All our growing cities across the country have grown very strongly in the past 10 years, and they have to ask themselves how they can continue to support that economic growth over the next 10. To do that, they will have to think of innovative ways of dealing with congestion. We have said to cities and towns across the country that if they come forward with innovative plans, we are prepared to back that with hard cash.

Gavin Strang: We should certainly take our share of the credit for the Kyoto treaty, but does my right hon. Friend not agree that we must address the fact that greenhouse gas emissions from international aviation remain unregulated? I note what she said about a European carbon emissions trading scheme. Can she indicate what other steps the Government are taking to change this state of affairs?

Ruth Kelly: Yes, it is right that not only do we push ahead with the European trading scheme—it will set an absolute cap on aviation emissions across Europe, counting not only emissions created within the eurozone, but all planes leaving from Europe and arriving in Europe, and will make a substantive contribution to climate change—but, importantly, that, within that, we think about how to create efficiency in aviation. That means encouraging future investment in technology and creating incentives to use airspace better, which is why we are working towards a single European sky and working with traffic control services to ensure the most efficient air traffic control in each country.

Adam Price: Some 70 per cent. of the Scottish Government's transport budget is spent on sustainable public transport, and the Welsh Assembly's Sustainability Committee has urged the adoption of a similar target for Wales. How well is the Secretary of State's Department doing on the breakdown of expenditure between public transport and roads?

Ruth Kelly: Rail usage has increased by almost 50 per cent. since 1997, whereas traffic has increased by 12 per cent, and those figures speak for themselves. We are making unprecedented levels of investment in rail, and we intend to continue that with up to £15 billion of investment over the next five-year period. As a result, we have the fastest growing railway in Europe. Looking beyond that, we can see very exciting opportunities for reopening or making more use of lines and for encouraging more people to abandon their cars and think about alternative ways of moving around.

Stephen Hammond: The Secretary of State will know that rail freight accounts for only 2 per cent. of all freight transport emissions and that every tonne of freight carried by rail is estimated to produce at least 80 per cent. less carbon dioxide emissions than if road were used. Why then was there no high-level output specification—HLOS—for rail freight? Why have the Government failed to announce any funding for their strategic freight network?

Ruth Kelly: The hon. Gentleman has simply not read the rail White Paper, which allocated £200 million towards a strategic rail freight network across this country. He has also not noticed that I announced plans this morning to reject larger, so-called super-lorries on British roads. I did that—I know that his party has supported that policy in the past—not only because of the impact on the environment, but because such lorries might attract traffic from railways on to roads. We need to examine these things in the round and make sensible investment decisions, judging the impact on safety, but also considering the impact on carbon emissions and congestion.

Clive Efford: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the contribution that traffic congestion makes to emissions and climate change. May I draw her attention to the fact that we face a problem in south-east London at the Blackwall tunnel every day, and that a three-bridge scheme proposes to deal with it? I understand that the Mayor of London is not going to build the Thames Gateway bridge. Some of us have been saying that the Silvertown link should be prioritised, and this situation gives the opportunity for that to take place. Will she examine the matter and discuss it with the Mayor of London? Will she also take the opportunity to bring the Docklands Light Railway to North Greenwich, as it could then be moved on to Eltham, thus reducing the traffic congestion on this major arterial route?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend makes a very important point; we need to think about how we can encourage mobility from the south of the river to the north of the river and vice versa. We need to make it easier for people to be able to work on one side of the river and live on the other. I know that the Mayor of London has suggested innovative proposals, such as swinging cable cars across the river, and it is right that we examine all proposals on their merits. I shall take up my hon. Friend's suggestion to discuss this matter in greater detail with the Mayor of London in due course.

Bus Companies

Andrew George: What recent assessment she has made of the regulatory burden on bus companies.

Rosie Winterton: The Government are committed to cutting unnecessary regulatory burdens on business wherever possible, including on the bus industry. However, that must be balanced with the passenger's right to a safe and reliable service.

Andrew George: But can the Minister do nothing about the daily occurrence of what can only be described as a sketch from a "Carry on" movie taking place across rural areas? Passengers are forced to get off buses and get back on buses and repurchase tickets every 30 miles because the Government failed to secure a common-sense derogation from EU regulation 561/2006, which sets maximum targets in respect of bus drivers. Does this not simply play into the hands of certifiable ranters in other political parties, who—rightly, on this occasion—decry the rather bizarre micro-management that such regulations present?

Rosie Winterton: I remind the hon. Gentleman that the new EU rules do not limit the length of a bus route, but introduce improved safety requirements to do with the length of a driver's working week, to ensure proper weekly rest periods. We should support that, because of the huge safety implications. However, I know that concerns have been expressed about some of the ways in which that has been operated, and that is why the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), met representatives of the Confederation of Passenger Transport, the trade association for the bus and coach industry, to explore the industry's concerns and consider possible solutions within the constraints of the EU drivers' hours regulations. This is a safety issue, but we are considering the problems with interpreting the practical application of the regulations.

David Taylor: Is not there at least one respect in which the regulatory framework for bus companies should be tighter? I refer to the lack of an obligation to retrofit older buses to enable disabled access. In rural parts of Leicestershire, where traffic on buses is low, the economic pressure on the company to provide disabled access is much lower. Should we not aim for an earlier implementation date of these important regulations?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the accessibility of buses for disabled people. As he says, there is a programme of improvement. I am heartened when I see the many new buses that are being introduced with proper disabled access. The requirements will change, and another important factor will be the Local Transport Bill, which is making progress through Parliament at the moment. The Bill will enable local authorities to work with bus operators much more closely on such issues, and it is very disappointing that Conservative Front Benchers oppose it and all the improvements that it will bring.

Henry Bellingham: Does the Minister agree that the driving times and rest periods directive, which sets out the so-called 50 km rule, is completely unsuitable for and irrelevant to rural areas? Is she aware that a young dynamic company in my constituency, Norfolk Green, has told me that if the directive is implemented as it stands, the company will have to axe various new rural services? Will she not stand up for rural bus routes and companies?

Rosie Winterton: It was this Government who introduced the rural bus subsidy—now some £55 million a year—so we will not take any lectures from the Opposition about supporting rural bus services. As I have said, the EU rules are about safety and drivers' rest periods, but my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has met representatives of the industry to discuss their concerns and will look at possible solutions.

Active Traffic Management

John Spellar: What progress has been made on the introduction of active traffic management on the motorway network; and if she will make a statement.

Ruth Kelly: Last year, I announced the extension of hard shoulder running to parts of the M6 around Birmingham. This scheme is due to be open to traffic in summer 2011. The Department and the Highways Agency are examining in detail where hard shoulder running should be implemented more widely on the motorway network. This work is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

John Spellar: May I partially thank the Minister for that reply? Does she agree that the active traffic management on the M42 in the west midlands has brought lower congestion, lower carbon emissions, lower pollution and fewer accidents? Therefore, does she regret that the deadbeats in the Highways Agency and her Department should have ensured that those considerable benefits for motorists were delayed? Is not she appalled that those same useless officials are still delaying the roll-out to 2011 and beyond? When will Ministers get a grip on that lot?

Ruth Kelly: I commend my right hon. Friend for his great advocacy of active traffic management, even though I cannot condone the expressions he used in relation to officials in the Highways Agency and the Department. When he was a Transport Minister, he was a great champion of active traffic management. Indeed, it was under his leadership that the first trial of active traffic management and hard shoulder running was initiated around the M6 in Birmingham. I commend him for that.
	It is right that we should press on and try to secure as quickly as possible the huge benefits that can be secured, not necessarily by widening our motorways, although they might have to be widened in some cases—as with the recent announcement about the M25—but by using active traffic management and hard shoulder running wherever they can be used across the entire network. That is why I have asked officials to examine in detail where it might be applicable and where we might have the earliest openings. The Birmingham box will lead through to the next phases by the summer of 2011, and I hope to make further progress quickly thereafter.

Andrew MacKay: Does the Secretary of State accept that the biggest traffic management problem on our motorways is the delay in clearing up after often quite minor shunts? That causes terrific frustration, and is much worse here than anywhere on the continent. She has promised in the past to do something about it, but frankly no one thinks that anything has been done to date. Can she give me some reassurance this afternoon?

Ruth Kelly: I certainly can. The right hon. Gentleman must be aware that it was the Government who introduced traffic officers to our motorway network in recent years. Traffics officers have had measurable success in restoring moving traffic after accidents have occurred—

Andrew MacKay: indicated dissent.

Ruth Kelly: I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman shakes his head—they are extremely popular among those who come across them on their daily motorway journeys.
	It is right, too, that we should make faster progress. Collision accident equipment, for instance, which is now being routinely used by the Highways Agency, will also have an impact, as will the information that is now routinely given to drivers on overhead gantries. We give them information about what routes are best to use and where congestion is likely to occur. The point is that the motorway system ought to be seen as a system. We ought to think about how to manage it and how to manage traffic flows as best we can. That is why active traffic management, which regulates speed as well as opening up the hard shoulder, is the right way forward.

Jim Devine: The role of the DVLA is very important in traffic management. Is my right hon. Friend as concerned as I am about the fact that the DVLA is selling the addresses of my constituents to security companies—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must gently say to the hon. Gentleman that he keeps doing this and he will be stopped. He must keep confine his comments to the Question. He does this on a regular basis, and I am sorry to draw him up on it, but he will not do it again.

Robert Goodwill: We welcome the extension of hard shoulder running following the successful M42 trial. It will be rolled out, we have been told, in conjunction with toll lanes or high occupancy vehicle lanes. In the case of the M1, the M6 and the M62, will that be introduced on new tarmac created by widening the motorways, or will it be done on the cheap, using the road freed up by the hard shoulder running?

Ruth Kelly: I am glad that Opposition Front Benchers have come to see the merits of hard shoulder running and active traffic management. They have been dithering over it for quite a while, but at least, at last, they have seen sense. It is true, in many cases, that it is possible to deliver 95 per cent. of the benefits of widening at a fraction of the cost through hard shoulder running. However, when we are introducing new capacity—and only in those cases, such as when we are bringing the hard shoulder on stream and allowing motorists to use it for the first time—we might want to think about how to lock in that capacity so that it is not just taken up by more traffic. We should think about the most efficient way to use that extra capacity, perhaps by introducing a toll on the lane or car share lanes.

Rail Fares

Helen Southworth: What recent steps her Department has taken to simplify rail fares and make the rail system easier to use.

Ruth Kelly: Fulfilling a commitment made in last year's rail White Paper, a new system of simplified fares was announced in April this year. I have also asked Passenger Focus to carry out a study to see how well the current system meets passenger expectations and to make recommendations to me about further improvements.

Helen Southworth: I am sure that my constituents will welcome that answer, as the complex system of ticket pricing has been a source of some grievance to them and, they tell me, a disincentive to using rail services. Will my right hon. Friend also look again at a national railcard system for frequent users, which has been successful in mainland Europe in getting people on to the trains, and such a benefit should be given to our own people?

Ruth Kelly: I congratulate my hon. Friend on her remarks about rail fares. The simplified rail structure—the biggest shake-up in fares for a generation—will bring profound benefits to passengers. One of the benefits of the new system is not just that the same type of ticket will be available from each train operating company, but that railcards will be equally valid across the network. That is one of the real prizes that is secured by these reforms.

Philip Dunne: Is the Secretary of State aware that the quickest rail route from Ludlow to London is via Crewe, yet it is not possible legally to purchase a ticket from Ludlow to London via Crewe? Why is that?

Ruth Kelly: The simplified rail fare structure that we have introduced is indeed the biggest shake-up in fares for a generation, but I am clear that it is only part of the solution. One of the things that we must do for the passenger is to ensure that it is possible to buy a through ticket from any point in the United Kingdom to any other at the cheapest price. I have asked Passenger Focus to consider these issues and to work out from the passenger's point of view what would restore confidence in the railway fare structure, and I am sure that it will consider the point that the hon. Gentleman has made.

Louise Ellman: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that the current fragmented rail system can respond adequately to passengers' concerns? That includes ensuring that the simpler fares do not price people out of being able to book and travel on the same day.

Ruth Kelly: I congratulate my hon. Friend on her elevation to Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport. I have worked with her over the past year, and her elevation is extremely well deserved. I look forward to hearing more from her not just in Transport questions but in Select Committee hearings. She is right to say that we always ought to keep the structure of the railways under review, but the last thing the rail industry needs now is huge upheaval. In fact, this is the first time for a generation we have a stable structure for the industry, based on a secure financial footing, in which we are investing in increased capacity. From the passengers' point of view, that is what they want; they want more capacity, more seats on the railways, more reliable railways and, of course, a railway with fares that they can understand, and we are making progress on all fronts.

Paul Rowen: Was the Secretary of State aware that many rail companies used the introduction of simpler fares to increase fares for the second time this year? If she was aware, what is she doing about it?

Nicholas Winterton: Nothing!

Ruth Kelly: That is, frankly, not true.

Andrew Love: The Oyster card has been an enormous success since its introduction on the London underground network, yet the train operating companies are dragging their feet on the extension of the scheme to parts of outer London. As a result, my constituents have to purchase a ticket and then get on the underground and use the Oyster card. Some companies have reached agreement on when the cards will be introduced, but we need to put more pressure on them to introduce them sooner. Can my right hon. Friend help?

Ruth Kelly: I have raised this issue with the chair and chief executive of the Association of Train Operating Companies, which is in negotiations with Transport for London to find out how quickly Oyster cards can be introduced across the network. That is something that passengers would value. It would not only make a real difference to the network, but might mean that fares needed to be adjusted in response. There are clearly commercial issues to work through, and I will do whatever I can to help to broker an agreement.

Insurance Fraud

Bill Wiggin: What estimate she has made of the number of traffic collisions staged for insurance fraud purposes in the last 12 months.

Jim Fitzpatrick: The Department has made no estimate of the number of traffic collisions staged for insurance fraud purposes in the last 12 months.

Bill Wiggin: "Crash for cash" is a particularly nasty crime in which elderly, vulnerable and, in particular, female drivers are targeted by fraudsters who try to crash into their cars to get money. Apparently, £28 million has gone to the City of London police, but the majority of such crimes take place in the north of England. What will the Minister do at least to make sure that best practice is spread across the country, as 40 per cent. of people would not even know if they were a victim of this crime?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Gentleman raises a fair point. It is difficult to detect whether a crash has been staged for insurance and fraud purposes. The Association of British Insurers estimates that the number of road accidents caused by fraud gangs will rise to 2,500 by 2010, up from 1,000 in 2005. That is very much a matter for the insurance industry and its Insurance Fraud Bureau, and it is for the police to try to detect the crime, but obviously it is a matter of concern that has to be monitored closely.

Highway Charges

Ann Winterton: If she will bring forward a proposal for a scheme under which foreign registered lorries pay to use the highway network.

Jim Fitzpatrick: As announced in Budget 2008, following the freight data feasibility study the Government will not progress a vignette scheme at this stage. Our view is that enforcement is a better option to protect road users in the UK.

Ann Winterton: That is a disappointing response. The UK taxpayer will continue to have to pay for wear and tear on our infrastructure caused by foreign hauliers. Is it not a fact that a recent European Union regulation will allow unlimited access to UK markets by 2014? Whereas European hauliers have the benefit of cheaper fuel and unregulated, and therefore cheaper, labour, British hauliers will face yet further unfair competition. Many may go out of business. There is no enforcement to ensure that our good road safety standards can be maintained in future under those conditions.

Jim Fitzpatrick: As I said, the Government are determined to deal with the issue through enforcement. In the past two years, we have more than doubled enforcement targeted at heavy goods vehicles on international journeys. Alongside publication of the feasibility study conclusions, we announced a £24 million package that will fund two new enforcement sites at locations with a high volume of heavy goods vehicles traffic, a 50 per cent. increase in the number of checks carried out, a near doubling of prohibitions, 97 additional staff and a move to 24/7 enforcement checking. We believe that enforcement will protect the road haulage industry. The matter to which the hon. Lady refers will come under discussion in Europe in due course; it has not been decided so far.

Anthony Steen: I wonder whether the House is aware that 1.7 million heavy goods vehicles have come into Britain over the past 10 years. They were all full of dirty fuel—full of sulphur that they are belching out into our countryside. How does that square with the Government's policy on CO2 emissions and green fuel, with which all our heavy goods vehicles have to fill up their tanks? It makes a nonsense of the Government's policy.

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point. We do not want UK hauliers disadvantaged by those coming from outside, whether the issue is dirty or cheaper fuel, hauliers not observing the regulations on tiredness or overloading their vehicles, or any other regulation being abused. We have reinforced the amount of money available to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, the enforcement agency, to make sure that it can police vehicles far more effectively than they have ever been policed before. I assure him that it is determined to do that, and is doing that.

Theresa Villiers: The Minister says that he does not want the UK haulage industry disadvantaged, but it is being disadvantaged. Faced with intense competition from foreign hauliers who pay no British taxes, the UK haulage industry is on its knees. Some 87 per cent. of lorries travelling through British ports to the continent are now foreign-owned. Family-run haulage businesses are going out of business every day because of rocketing fuel prices, and now they face more fuel tax hikes because the Prime Minister needs to fill a gap in his public finances. The Government's complacency on the issue is astounding.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady must not make a speech; she is asking a supplementary question. She should put the question, and she may also ask a second question, but she should not make a speech.

Theresa Villiers: I am grateful. I apologise, Mr. Speaker. Does the Secretary of State really want her political legacy to comprise presiding over the death of the British haulage industry?

Jim Fitzpatrick: No, we certainly do not want to see the British road haulage industry damaged, which is why we have put in place measures that we believe will protect it. In respect of the accusation that rising fuel costs in Britain are harming our industry, rising fuel costs are affecting the whole of Europe. Every industry is being affected, as we have seen on our television screens over the past few weeks.

Theresa Villiers: But more than seven years ago the Government promised to introduce measures to ensure that foreign hauliers pay towards the cost of the damage that they cause to Britain's roads. When will they keep the promise that they made, or will they just continue to dither while hard-working UK haulage firms go to the wall?

Jim Fitzpatrick: As I explained to the hon. Lady only a moment ago, the Government carried out the freight data feasibility study to try to identify the best way of protecting the British road haulage industry. It was determined through that study, in which, as I understand it, the Road Haulage Association co-operated and participated, that a vignette scheme of the order that would be allowed would not be appropriate, and that the best way to protect the RHA and British industry was to beef up enforcement on our roads to make sure that foreign hauliers would not be able to take any further advantage. That is what we said we would do. That is what we have done with the extra £24 million that we have allocated to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, and that extra enforcement will have an impact.

Topical Questions

John Robertson: If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

Ruth Kelly: On 7 May I announced new proposals to strengthen the way people learn to drive and are tested, to make newly qualified drivers safer and create a culture of extended learning. On 16 May I announced full approval and funding of £244 million for an extension to the Manchester Metrolink. These new routes are expected to attract an additional 10 million passengers a year. The new simpler structure for rail fares announced in the rail White Paper was introduced for advance fares in May, and on 22 May the Department began a public consultation on the terms of a new South Central franchise. A report commissioned by my Department on longer and heavier goods vehicles has been published today. I have decided not to allow super-lorries on UK roads for the foreseeable future.

John Robertson: Yesterday, the head of the International Air Transport Association commented that the UK's Civil Aviation Authority is the "world's worst regulator" and criticised the UK as BAA's "Monopoly-land". For years I have called for an end to the ludicrous situation whereby Scotland's two major airports in Glasgow and Edinburgh, which are only 40 miles apart, are owned by the same people. It is time to solve the problem, much the same as in London—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am going to stop the hon. Gentleman. It seems that I am stopping many hon. Members. A supplementary question in a fast-paced session should be short and sharp.

Ruth Kelly: The point that my hon. Friend was rightly making is that it is important to have good service from all British airports, including those in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He is right, too, to point to the Competition Commission report, which is examining ownership of British airports and argued that the issue was not only ownership but aviation capacity in the United Kingdom. Clearly, I cannot pre-empt the report's final conclusions, but when the major hub airport in England is operating at virtually 99 per cent. capacity, it is perhaps not surprising that there are knock-on implications, first and foremost for other British airports. I am sure that my hon. Friend's constituents who use Glasgow and Edinburgh airports will feel the result of that.

Norman Baker: The Secretary of State talks about her commitment to climate change, but the Office for National Statistics report published today shows that emissions from air transport are up 9 per cent. in the past year alone and emissions from road transport are up as well. Does she think that building more and more roads and more and more airport capacity is the right way to reduce emissions? Is she committed to the 60 per cent. cut that the Government say they want to achieve in carbon dioxide emissions? What if they delivered 60 per cent. from the transport sector?

Ruth Kelly: I am certainly committed to the overall position of the UK Government that we should aim for at least 60 per cent. domestic reductions in CO2 emissions, if not go further. Indeed, as the hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has asked the Committee on Climate Change to see whether 60 per cent. is the right number or whether it should perhaps be 80 per cent. However, I do not accept for a moment that every single sector of the UK or the European economy should contribute precisely the same amount. What matters is that overall we not only reach our climate change objectives but deal with the issues of international aviation and road transport, and all the other sectors of the economy. Within that, it is perfectly possible to have an aviation sector that meets passengers' expectations for increased mobility and cheap holidays. However, we have to ensure that it is within a framework—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I call David Drew.

David Drew: On Thursday, the Office of Rail Regulation will announce its draft conclusions on which bits of track best meet the criteria set by Government on improved performance and capacity. Will the Minister look forward and see whether the piece of track between Kemble and Swindon deserves redoubling, as many people who use that line feel that it does?

Tom Harris: I know that my hon. Friend would not expect me to pre-empt any announcement that the Office of Rail Regulation will make later this week, tempting though it is. I pay tribute to him for the resilient and dedicated campaign that he has run for the redoubling of that line, but I, like him, will have to wait for a further announcement from the ORR.

Peter Bone: Fourteen-year-old Alex Williams was in a collision with a car while riding his bike. He suffered bleeding to the brain and was in intensive care. Alex says:
	"you can not tell teenagers to wear something they don't want because we just won't listen. The only way to make teenagers wear a helmet is to make it law".
	Does the Minister agree with Alex that it should be compulsory for children to wear cycle helmets?

Rosie Winterton: I express my deepest sympathy for the hon. Gentleman's constituent—the young man he spoke about. The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that there have been occasional calls for making the wearing of cycle helmets compulsory. It is an option that we look at from time to time. There are no plans at the moment to make it compulsory, but I hope that I can reassure the hon. Gentleman by saying that we are going to conduct research into the effectiveness of wearing cycle helmets. We hope to have an interim report in the summer, and I hope that that will be able to inform us particularly on the points that he raises.

David Taylor: Present medium and long-term Government transport plans have been partly rooted in assumptions that 2020 oil prices would be around $70 per barrel. Given that they are currently double that, will the Department rework its road, rail and air strategies to make them fit for purpose in an era of no more cheap oil—especially in aviation, where unquestioned obeisance to "predict and provide" in a largely untaxed industry is a major environmental hazard?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The Government take into account a range of scenarios when considering future demand for different forms of transport, drawing up their long-term transport plans and appraising individual schemes. I can assure my hon. Friend that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, on behalf of the Government, keeps our assumptions under review in response to changing circumstances.

Adam Holloway: Does the Minister agree that for the sake of all the people sitting in traffic jams around the Dartford tolls today, as well as having a consultation we should try to have, say, a week without tolls or something intelligent such as tolls going just one way?

Rosie Winterton: I have to say that the hon. Gentleman's proposal for a week without tolls is completely unintelligent. The idea that one could somehow, for one week, remove the barriers and have vehicles going through at speed is so dangerous that it is ridiculous. The other idea—that we should take the whole tolls compartment away—is just ridiculous. The hon. Gentleman needs to come up with slightly more sensible suggestions if he is to be taken seriously.

Clive Betts: I am sure the Minister is aware of the £100 million scheme proposed by Network Rail to cut 10 minutes off the journey time between Sheffield and London on the midland main line. Given that that scheme would cost only 1 per cent. of what was spent on the west coast main line but would yield 25 per cent. of its benefits in journey time savings, does he not agree that it is a very good deal? Given the benefits to Sheffield and other economies in the area, it ought to be given favourable consideration by the Government.

Tom Harris: My hon. Friend has run an enthusiastic campaign on this scheme. It is not my job as rail Minister to interpret the engineering benefits of the scheme; it is up to Network Rail and the Office of Rail Regulation, as he knows. I am sure that in the next few days we will get an assessment from the ORR of whether the scheme is deliverable and represents best value for money.

Hugo Swire: Given the inevitable disruption to two of the four lines between Reading and Paddington resulting from Crossrail, will the Minister look urgently at the reinstatement of a three-mile loop on the Exeter-Waterloo line, and can he say when the work will start on the agreed route at Axminster?

Tom Harris: I shall write to the hon. Gentleman on his last point. On his substantive point about the conflict between the different tracks after Crossrail services begin, he will know that Crossrail is essentially a metro service and will not use the fast lines between Reading and Paddington. A great deal of work has gone into making sure that there is no conflict between Crossrail services and existing fast services between Reading and Paddington. I am not aware that anything has changed in that respect, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to write to me with more details I will be more than happy to respond in detail.

Laura Moffatt: Plans have been published for the £5.5 billion upgrade of the Thameslink line, which is very welcome for our constituents. How will my hon. Friend make sure that it runs to time and to cost, and that its effect on the travelling public is minimised, including the upgrade to Gatwick airport?

Tom Harris: I echo my hon. Friend's welcome of the £5.5 billion the Government have committed to making progress with Thameslink. The work we have done in preparation for both phases of Thameslink, the first phase of which is due to be completed in 2011, gives me enough confidence to believe that work will be completed on time. Phase 2 will not be completed until 2015, after the Olympics have finished, but phase 1, which will provide a major step change in increased frequency on the north-south route, will be completed on time and to budget.

Brooks Newmark: As the Minister will be aware, traffic along the A120 leading to Braintree gets worse and worse every day. An announcement on the extension of the A120 between Braintree and Marks Tey is long overdue. When can my constituents expect an announcement?

Tom Harris: The hon. Gentleman and I have had a number of discussions on this scheme, I seem to remember, and of course he is keen to know what progress has been made since our last meeting. I will be able to make an announcement in due course. It will not be an early announcement, but I am happy to give the commitment that he will be kept up to date with any decisions taken. The major problem is the steep increase in the cost of the scheme, but working with my officials we will try to find some way forward, and I will keep him fully informed.

Hugh Bayley: It is 20 years since the electrification of the east coast main line, and the line is now used practically to capacity. Atkins has produced a study saying that a new high-speed east coast line would generate two and a half times its cost in economic benefits. Will the Government look seriously at the case for more and faster trains connecting Yorkshire and the north-east with London and the Eurostar services to the continent?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend rightly champions the cause of his constituents. It is important that we continue to invest in rail services. He talks about faster, more frequent trains. Yes, we must have faster and more frequent trains, but not at any price. I welcome proposals for high-speed lines and for conventional lines running at greater frequency, and proposals to upgrade the network. I have already invited Network Rail to consider all the options that we might look at for funding—not in the next period, but in the period beyond—so that if demand materialises for rail travel and more and more people continue to use rail services, we will be in a position to make the right long-term choices.

Mark Pritchard: Further to the earlier question about BAA, and given that Britain needs an effective and efficient airport network, does the Secretary of State agree that Britain's competitiveness is being negatively affected by the monopoly of BAA?

Ruth Kelly: I certainly agree that Britain's airports are not highly regarded across the world, and that is having a negative impact on perceptions of Britain abroad. That is a situation that we must sort out. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, the Competition Commission is looking into the situation. I am not going to pre-empt its final conclusions, which will be published later this year, but I would say that the issue is not just about ownership of airports; it is about the regulatory system, too. I recently announced that we were setting up a review to look into the economic regulation of airports across the piece, so that we put passengers right at the centre of our proposal. The issues are the passenger experience, capacity in the aviation sector and, potentially, ownership, although the ownership questions are ones for the Competition Commission.

Jessica Morden: Will the Minister look into an issue that was raised with me by the excellent Severn tunnel action group, which is campaigning for better services for its railway station, so that in future new or altered rail franchise documents include requirements to promote rail-to-rail connections, and greater use of rail is encouraged?

Tom Harris: This is a subject on which my hon. Friend and I have corresponded. I have committed to meeting her and a delegation of her constituents to discuss the issues. She is right to say that connectivity of through railway journeys is vital if the growth in the railways that we have seen over the past 10 years is to continue.

Anne Main: This week, Mr. Bill Emery of the Office of Rail Regulation severely criticised Network Rail's punctuality, delivery and overruns. Will the Secretary of State bear Network Rail's poor performance in mind in the rail freight application process, given its blithe assurances in my constituency that it would not cause delays, and not take its evidence as seriously as it would like her to?

Tom Harris: It is absolutely true that Network Rail has not performed as well as it should have over the past six months or so. However, it is also true that Network Rail has developed a world-class engineering organisation. I have absolute faith that whatever difficulties Network Rail has to overcome—and there are difficulties—it will manage to produce the excellent railway service that we all want. Network Rail has already committed to a 31 per cent. improvement in efficiencies over the current control period. We will find out exactly what the performance demand will be from the Office of Rail Regulation by the end of this week. However, I am confident that, in contrast with the awfulness of Railtrack, which was introduced by the previous Conservative Government, Network Rail will deliver for the passengers of this country.

Points of Order

Mark Pritchard: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My constituents are concerned about the Government's proposals to introduce polyclinics, which will possibly see the closure of GP services throughout Shropshire and the borough of Telford and Wrekin. Given the anxiety of my constituents and those of other hon. Members, in all parts of the House, may I ask you what guidance, if any, you have been given by the Government business managers about an early oral statement on this important issue?

Mr. Speaker: The Government business managers do not give me guidance; I give them guidance. However, the issue is not a matter for the Chair.

Andrew MacKinlay: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether I may make a pre-emptive strike. I understand that the Home Secretary and her Ministers will be available for the press and media after 4 o'clock to reveal the so-called concessions on the 42-day controversy. I have asked the Vote Office whether it has received any indication about the availability of those amendments and the answer is no—the expectation is tomorrow. Surely it is wrong that the press will be spun the line on those amendments before Members of Parliament have had a chance not only to examine them, but to comment and to rebut the arguments of that absurd policy.

Mr. Speaker: What the hon. Gentleman has said is a pre-emptive strike: the situation has not happened yet and therefore I cannot rule on the matter. I will have to look into it if it does happen.

Oliver Heald: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it be possible for you to issue instructions to Government Departments and Ministers to the effect that if they produce a press briefing or press release, it should, at the very least, be put in the Vote Office at the same time as it is provided to journalists?

Mr. Speaker: I will not be drawn into this argument.

Members of Parliament (Pay and Responsibilities)

Peter Lilley: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Senior Salaries Review Body to take account of transfers of powers between Parliament and European Union institutions when making recommendations on the pay of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes.
	In virtually every occupation, it is recognised that pay should reflect responsibilities. If people receive more responsibilities, they get higher pay. If they move to a post with fewer responsibilities, they expect to receive lower pay. The same should be true of Parliament. If, as is contemplated under the Bill that deals with the European constitutional treaty, this House hands over more of its powers to European institutions, MPs' remuneration should reflect that diminution of their responsibilities. If, on the other hand, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has promised, Parliament regains some powers, such as those over social and employment policies that were conceded in the Amsterdam treaty, that should be reflected positively when MPs' pay is assessed.
	This issue is important because Parliament is considering transferring a significant slice of its powers on energy, foreign policy, immigration and several other areas to European institutions under the Lisbon treaty. A substantial transfer of powers has already occurred under previous treaties, and this House has ceded powers on a lesser scale to devolved Parliaments and to the judiciary under the Human Rights Act 1998. The German Government estimate that more than 80 per cent. of German laws are now decided at a European level. Our own Trade Minister has admitted that
	"around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector stems from legislation agreed by Ministers in Brussels."—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 29 June 2006; Vol. 683, c. WA184.]
	I have heard hon. Members claim that only 10 per cent. of our laws are made in Brussels—a figure that they attribute to a Library paper, but that paper says no such thing. It remarks that the number of statutory instruments laid under the European Communities Act 1972 amounts to about 10 per cent. of all the statutory instruments passed by the House, but points out that EU statutory instruments typically enact a whole directive, which is often the equivalent of an Act of primary legislation, whereas domestic statutory instruments implement regulations. To compare the two is like comparing apples and pears, or rather pumpkins and pears given the disparity in their size. It also ignores the most plentiful fruit that comes from the European orchard—regulations, most of which are never considered by this House and which hon. Members find difficult even to obtain.
	The total scale of EU legislation is enormous. Last year, the EU passed 177 directives, which are more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament, and 2,033 regulations, which become directly enforceable in this place, not to mention 1,045 decisions. Even that huge tally ignores the extent to which our powers are diminished by our inability to do things that we would like to do because they would conflict with European law. When I was a Minister, officials would frequently say, "No, Minister, you can't do that", because something was within the exclusive competence of the European Union.
	If the Lisbon treaty goes through, a further salami slice of powers will be transferred to the European institutions. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who served with distinction on the European constitutional convention and who knows more about the implications of the Lisbon treaty than almost anyone else in the House, except for my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), recently told the Fabian Society:
	"If the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified and devolution...continues apace, in fifteen to twenty years this House of Commons will have only two functions...to raise taxes and...to authorise war".
	She went on to say that we are making
	"fewer and fewer decisions that matter"
	to people's daily lives, and that she could not tell her constituents that the buck stops here.
	Admittedly, declaring wars kept Parliament pretty busy under the previous Prime Minister, as does raising taxes under the current incumbent of No. 10. However, our constituents want us to wage fewer wars, raise fewer taxes and focus on the huge range of issues that affect their daily lives, over which they assume and hope that we retain the powers that they pay us to exercise on their behalf.
	Few voters, or even Members of this House, fully realise how many powers have been, or are about to be, transferred elsewhere. There are three reasons for this. The first is that Governments of all persuasions deny that any significant powers are being transferred. The second is that, once powers have been transferred, Ministers engage in a charade of pretence that they still retain those powers. Even when introducing measures that they are obliged to bring in as a result of an EU directive, they behave as though the initiative were their own.
	Indeed, Ministers often end up nobly accepting responsibility for laws that they actually opposed when they were being negotiated in Brussels. They took the rap for costly and troublesome home improvement packs—which have added to the woes of the housing market—even though they were actually mandated by a Brussels directive. Similarly, they took the rap for fortnightly bin collections, hospital reconfiguration and a number of other measures, even though they had all been triggered by directives from Brussels. At first sight, it is odd that Ministers—who, in this Government, are not normally slow to blame others—should nobly defend and accept responsibility for Brussels' legislative progeny, in whose conception they have often played little part. They prefer to claim paternity rather than admit impotence—the fate of the cuckold across the ages.
	The third reason is that the transfer of power occurs not all in one go but by a process of salami-slicing, and it is easy to close our eyes to what is happening. As a result, there is a danger of Parliament sleepwalking into becoming little more than a provincial assembly. If that is what is happening, we should be paid accordingly—just as district councillors get less than county councillors, and county councillors get less than Members of the devolved Assemblies.
	I do not have a masochistic desire to see MPs' pay cut, but I want still less to see our powers diminish. The best way to prevent the latter might be to link pay to responsibilities. I do not know any Member of Parliament who entered Parliament to become financially better off. None the less, just as the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully, so the prospect of finding our pockets a bit emptier at the end of the month—and having to justify that to our spouses—might wake up those who have shut their eyes to what is happening. If we do not face up to what is happening, we will find ourselves being progressively relegated to what Bagehot called the dignified part of the constitution. As Tony Benn once rhetorically asked:
	"I wonder how long it took for the yeomen of the guard to realise that they were no longer part of the regular army."
	My Bill is designed to provide a wake-up call whenever we risk going further down that route, although I accept that it has little chance of becoming law in this Parliament. Those who support the transfer of power from here to supranational institutions should logically accept that our pay should reflect the diminution of our responsibilities. But, strangely, all the Euro-enthusiasts whom I asked to sponsor the Bill declined to do so without explaining why. Too many Members are happy to avert their eyes from what is happening, so long as they retain the prestige and emoluments that were appropriate to a fully sovereign Parliament. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas.
	If any Labour Members oppose the Bill, I hope that they will come out and object to it here and now, rather than trying to dispose of it by subterfuge one Friday morning. I look forward to hearing them argue for having their cake and eating it. I doubt that they would convince many of their constituents that, unlike any in other occupation, MPs' pay should be divorced from their responsibilities.

Hugh Bayley: We have just heard a witty and amusing speech. I was not aware that this issue was going to be raised today, but I was sitting in the Chamber listening to Transport questions and suddenly the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) rose to his feet and made this proposal. He said that he had asked a number of Euro-enthusiasts to back his Bill; I regard myself as a Euro-enthusiast, but he did not ask me. Had he done so, he would have given me notice that he was going to make this nonsensical proposal, and I would have been able to prepare a better speech. However, I shall certainly try to rise to the challenge that he has thrown across the Chamber.
	The right hon. Gentleman argues that the volume of legislation to be considered by the House will decline as more and more powers are passed across to the European Parliament, but he knows as well as any other Member that the volume of legislation considered by this House continues to increase year by year. We have never suggested that that is an argument for increasing Members' pay pro rata—

Stephen Pound: That is a good idea.

Hugh Bayley: I note what my hon. Friend says.
	Nor should the passing of some legislative powers from this House to Europe be an argument for moving in the opposite direction.
	I must say seriously to Members of the House that I do not think that the European Union provides a good model for the remuneration of Members of Parliament. I have just checked with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who is a sponsor of the Bill and well versed in EU matters, and she tells me that EU spend is about 0.5 per cent. of EU wealth. The spend of our national Government is probably about 40 per cent. of our national wealth, which is 50 or 60 times as much as the EU spend.
	If the right hon. Gentleman is arguing that there is a serious transfer of financial responsibility from the House to Europe, that is just not based on fact. The Lisbon treaty not only does not change that fact, but it delegates some powers back to national Parliaments. The public want to see more information about MPs' pay and allowances, but they would get less information if our pay was tied into and buried under bureaucracy from Europe. Surprisingly to my way of thinking, the Bill is proposed by a staunch opponent of Europe whom I would have thought could see that point himself.
	The right hon. Gentleman is making a political point about Europe, not a serious proposal for greater transparency in the pay of Members of Parliament and greater accountability to the public for Members of this Parliament. I hope that the Bill does not receive its First Reading.
	 Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 23 (Motions for leave to bring Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Peter Lilley, Mr. Michael Ancram, Mr. Peter Bone, Mr. Graham Brady, Mr. Frank Field, Mr. James Gray, Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory, Mr. Edward Leigh, Mr. John Redwood, Ms Gisela Stuart and Mr. Charles Walker.

Members of Parliament (pay and Responsibilities)

Mr. Peter Lilley accordingly presented a Bill to require the Senior Salaries Review Body to take account of transfers of powers between Parliament and European Union institutions when making recommendations on the pay of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 17 October, and to be printed [Bill 113].

Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 4th July 2007 in the last Session of Parliament (Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill (Programme)):
	 Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement at this day's sitting.
	 Subsequent stages
	2. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	3. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.— [Mark Tami.]
	 Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day

Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 9
	 — 
	Annual report to Secretary of State

Lords amendment: No. 1

James Plaskitt: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 5 and Nos. 106 to 117.

James Plaskitt: We come to what are almost the final stages of Parliament's consideration of the Bill. Indeed, we are just short of the first anniversary of my introducing it to the House on 5 June 2007. Over almost a year of consideration, we have found much cross-party agreement and consensus as the Bill has proceeded on its way.
	Before I dive into consideration of the first batch of amendments, I want to place on record my appreciation of the way that hon. Members dealt with the Bill in Committee, in which where we had detailed, co-operative and constructive deliberations, which have helped to improve it. As I speak to the amendments, hon. Members representing the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrat party will spot ideas that they brought up in Committee, which I promised on behalf of the Government to take away and consider. I have done that. Those with merit found favour, and are therefore to be incorporated in the Bill in a way that will improve it.
	The Bill was considered extensively in the other place, where, of course, some of those amendments originated. The process has been constructive, and we now have before us a batch of amendments that are, I think, not too controversial—we shall find out soon—and should add the final polish to a well-considered Bill.
	The first group of amendments relates to the status of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission and to its reporting requirements. The amendments make the necessary provision for the new body to have Crown status to provide stability for the Child Support Agency's greatest resource, its staff.

Oliver Heald: Obviously it is sensible for the commission's staff to retain their status as civil servants, but why on earth were the Government ever thinking of taking it away from them? And why is the commission to be a Crown body rather than an executive agency, which is what it was in the first place? The Government seem to have gone around in a circle.

James Plaskitt: There is no great mystery. The most important thing that the Bill introduces is the commission, which will be a non-departmental public body. We opted for NDPB status because we think it important to put the operation of the commission, and therefore the delivery of child maintenance, at arm's length from ministerial involvement. That argument has been rehearsed exhaustively throughout all stages of the Bill's consideration, and I thought that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had accepted that this was the right way to proceed.
	Normally when a body takes on non-departmental status the civil servants who work in that body also take on a different status, but when Ministers discussed the issue with staff, they made clear their concern about it. Having listened, we reached an understanding—as I have already announced—allowing the commission to be a non-departmental public body but allowing its staff to enjoy Crown status. That is not a unique solution; there are precedents.

Oliver Heald: Is this not just another example of dithering? The Government began by saying "Let us have an arm's length body that is not run by civil servants", and then changed their minds. Suddenly we are back with a half-baked arrangement that is nothing like either of the options.

James Plaskitt: The body will remain at arm's length. It is a non-departmental public body. The idea was to put it at arm's length from Ministers, and it remains at arm's length from Ministers. Nothing has changed, and the hon. Gentleman's accusation that there has been some dithering is completely erroneous.

John Bercow: Will the Minister give way?

James Plaskitt: I will give way when I have finished replying to the hon. Gentleman's colleague.
	The fundamental status of the organisation has not changed—it remains a non-departmental public body—but its staff, who are very important to us in helping to deliver all this, raised with us concerns about their status as civil servants, of which they are proud and which they would normally lose when the organisation became a non-departmental public body. They asked whether we would consider giving it Crown status while retaining it as a non-departmental public body. As I have said, there are precedents for that. A great many civil servants are involved—10,000—and we were able to accede to their wishes. They welcomed the fact that, at least initially—I am about to come to that—the organisation will retain its Crown status, and they will retain their status as civil servants.

John Bercow: Lords Amendment No. 2(6) makes provision for an order-making power. My view is that clarity is of the essence. Is it intended that that order-making power should be subject to the negative procedure of the House or to its affirmative counterpart?

James Plaskitt: I may be able to assist the hon. Gentleman with that if he gives me a little time.

John Bercow: It might prompt the Minister, although I suspect that the answer is now being provided to him, if I tell him that his noble Friend in the other place promised that it would be subject to the affirmative procedure, which, for the benefit of those listening to our proceedings, means that there would be an element of parliamentary scrutiny. He is not going to renege on that, is he?

James Plaskitt: No, he is not; he will confirm what my noble Friend said in the other place. There is plenty of consistency.

Oliver Heald: Even now, the Minister has not finally made up his mind about whether it should be a Crown body. The point about amendment No. 2 is that he will review the matter again. We started off with an arm's length body without civil servants. Then we had the halfway house of having civil servants, but with it still being an arm's length body. Now the Government are agreeing to have another look at it in three years. Not only have they dithered, they propose to continue dithering for another three years.

James Plaskitt: This is getting a bit repetitive. Let me say again that there is no dithering. The fundamental objective, namely the non-departmental public status and all the advantages that flow from that, is in place, unaltered and unamended by anything that we have done, save for the difference we have made in respect of the staff who work for the existing agency, who were concerned about their loss of civil service status. We have been able to retain that. That is the only thing that has changed; it is not fundamental in terms of the purpose of the Bill and has been accommodated within the Bill's essential objectives. It is subject to review and I will come on to explain why that is.

Nadine Dorries: Has the dithering, or non-dithering, had any affect on staff morale?

James Plaskitt: There has been no dithering. Let me do this again. We introduced the NDPB proposal, which was welcomed by the staff of the agency who support the Bill, approve of the direction we are going in and are looking forward to working for the new organisation. The one thing they said was, "This means that we will lose our civil service status." Initially, it did, but we considered what they said and have been able to restore their civil service status. That has enhanced the staff's morale, and if the hon. Lady cares to go to one of the CSA offices and asks for herself, she will find that that is the case.
	Staff to whom I have spoken—I have spoken to many hundreds—support the Bill and the proposed change. They are very pleased at the decision we were able to make on the retention of their civil service status, so I can tell the House that the effect of the Bill and the subsequent change we made on status have substantially enhanced staff morale.
	As I made clear during earlier stages of the Bill's passage—I am pleased to note that Opposition Members have echoed me on this—the difficulties experienced by the agency in the past have resulted from the failure of current policy and structure, not as a result of any action or inaction by the agency's staff, who remain its most important resource. Throughout the history of the agency, staff have time and again proved to be dedicated to providing the best service to all clients, both parents with care and non-resident parents. The staff of the agency are absolutely essential to the success of these reforms and, like all of us, what they really want is to be given the right tools to enable them simply to get on with the job of collecting the maintenance and seeing it flow to children.
	As we developed our proposals for reform and as I have said before, it became increasingly clear that the agency's staff did have concerns about the loss of civil service status. Perceptions are important, and it was in no one's interests for us to put our reforms at risk through unnecessarily destabilising those at the front end of delivering those important reforms. This change to a Crown body will therefore enable staff to remain civil servants, and it allows them to look forward to, rather than have concerns about, the commission's launch.
	There are a number of amendments consequential to this change. For example, as staff will now remain civil servants, there is no need to apply the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 and 2006, and as a result, the clause in question can now be removed. Additionally, we recognise that over time, the advantages of Crown status in general might recede, so we intend to review the commission's status after three years. If the review concludes that Crown status is no longer necessary or advantageous, the amendments provide an order-making power to make the necessary changes, subject to affirmative procedure. However, at that point, as now, the views of the staff will be important in determining for us whether we decide to remove Crown status.

Paul Rowen: I would be grateful if the Minister explained what it is that he sees diminishing with time. A similar statement was made in the other place by the noble Lord McKenzie of Luton, and it was not adequately explained. Many of the same staff are still going to be employed, and if they lose Crown status, they will lose all the benefits that go with that. What safeguards is the Minister going to put in place to ensure that they do not lose out?

James Plaskitt: The key point is that this is an issue specific to the commission. The reason it makes sense to review, and why I chose my words carefully regarding Crown status, is that there may well be reconsideration across government as a whole of the position of the Crown status of the bodies concerned. It is important that we recognise that a wider review is taking place that might change some of the current conditions regarding Crown status, whereby the specific arrangement made for this commission may no longer have its current advantages. It is therefore simply logical to accept that there will be a review, not specifically of this body but in the context of a wider review of Crown status. However, and as I said, just as we have listened to the staff at this point and been able to agree to their request to retain Crown status, their views on this matter will be critical to the commission and to us in future, at the point of review. I am happy to underline that point.
	I have also taken on board the point made in Committee and in the other place that the Bill explicitly requires the commission to include in its annual report its use of outsourcing to private and voluntary social bodies, but not to public bodies. An amendment has therefore been made to put the latter requirement in the Bill. That picks up on a very sensible proposal made by the Opposition in Committee.
	I believe that this group of amendments improves the Bill, and I commend it to the House.

Andrew Selous: Let me start by thanking the Minister for his thanks to Opposition Members for our co-operation and scrutiny during the Bill's passage. He is absolutely right—Members in all parts of the House are absolutely united in trying to get our system of child support right. We all recognise that it has not been right for many years, and the fault for that really lies with Members of this House present and past, and absolutely not with the staff—I agree with the Minister on that—who have done their best in difficult circumstances. Frankly, they have not had the tools to do the job, as he said. The Bill contains a pretty powerful toolkit that we on the Conservative Benches agree with in very large part.
	On Lords amendment No. 1, we welcome the extra transparency provided by the inclusion in the commission's annual report of the provision of services to CMEC by Ministers of the Crown, Government Departments or public bodies specified by the Secretary of State. Co-operation, in particular with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, will be fundamental to the commission's future success. I give the Minister notice that when we discuss the next group of amendments, I shall raise some specific issues about the current level of co-operation—or non co-operation, as sadly is the case—with HMRC, given existing legislation. I shall not expect him to have immediate answers, but I should be grateful if he got back to me.
	Clearly, HMRC and the Treasury will assist CMEC, but it is not clear to me precisely what CMEC will be doing for other Departments and public bodies. Lords amendment No. 1 cuts both ways; it is about services supplied both to and by CMEC. I can clearly see that there is a case for CMEC to help HMRC should it find out details about information that is perhaps not being declared to the Revenue; that would be an entirely sensible use of CMEC staff time. However, will the Minister elaborate on whether there are any other areas in which CMEC staff will be expected to help other Departments and public bodies? After all, it is not as if CMEC's staff will not already have enough to do and will not already have their work cut out significantly.
	The Minister began by discussing Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 5, and 106 to 117. As he said, they will change the status of CMEC to that of a Crown body, and will ensure that the commission's staff will remain as civil servants and will not have to change their employer. Lords amendment No. 2 introduces a new clause requiring the Secretary of State to review the status of the commission after three years, with the possibility of further reviews. I agree with the Minister that if we do not get staff morale right, we will not make a success of the commission. He rightly says that ensuring that the staff are happy and on board is essential. Given that Crown status is so important to the staff, will not reviewing it after three years, with the promise of further reviews, be unsettling to them? The Minister's objective might have been to reassure the staff—the 10,000 individuals of whom he spoke—but having constant ongoing reviews hanging over them is a funny way of doing that.

John Penrose: Does my hon. Friend agree that on the basis of what the Minister has been saying, it seems that the review in three years' time will be undertaken against a background of a Government-wide review of Crown status and perhaps the terms and conditions of employment of a great many civil servants? Surely that might poison the atmosphere and make the maintenance of staff morale between now and then, as that review starts to grind through, even harder than it might otherwise have been.

Andrew Selous: I agree with my hon. Friend, because certainty is important in employment; people want to know that their terms and conditions will not be unexpectedly changed or fundamentally reviewed. Those people joined the agency on a certain set of terms and conditions, with which they were happy, and they should have a reasonable expectation that their terms and conditions will be broadly similar in future.
	At the very least, the Government's manoeuvrings have not been perhaps as elegant as they could have been, given where the Government started from and where they have ended up. Will the Minister tell us how many other NDPBs are Crown bodies whose staff are civil servants? Is such an arrangement usual for NDPBs, or will CMEC be an isolated case? It would help the House if he let us know the answer to that.
	The Minister's colleague in another place, Lord McKenzie of Luton, who is virtually a parliamentary neighbour of mine, has said:
	"It is very important that the body is more at arm's length...Having a non-departmental public body with separate governance arrangements and with greater operational flexibility is a key part of the reforms. It is needed to distance the future from the legacy of current and past failure and the culture of non-compliance." ——[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2007; c. 4, Q2.]
	My next question to the Minister was what stops an executive agency from having operational flexibility, to which I do not feel that I received a full and adequate answer at the time.
	Indeed, many hon. Members on both sides of the House have questioned the need to set up a new body, given that the same staff in the same buildings will carry out essentially the same tasks—or at least with the same purpose. The Minister's argument about the need for this arm's length body has been undone, given that it will now have Crown status and that the staff will be civil servants. Would it not have saved taxpayers' money to leave CMEC as an executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions and been much less unsettling for the staff, who have been worried by the proposed change in their status? The staff also have an ongoing worry, given that a review will take place in three years, with a promise of further reviews in the future. I hope that the Minister will address those points.

Paul Rowen: I welcome the Minister's introductory remarks. We made several suggestions and amendments in Committee and on Report, and I am delighted that many of those proposals have found acceptance and are presented for our consideration today. Like other hon. Members, I welcome the passage of the Bill. As the Minister said, it is 12 months since we started to consider it, and the eradication of child poverty remains one of the biggest single issues that we have to tackle. Anything that ensures that parents with care get the money to which they are entitled to enable children to be brought up properly is to be welcomed. We have to accept that the House has failed singularly in the past to tackle this issue through the many guises of the CSA and various payment methods. Last year, we all welcomed what seemed to be a new start with CMEC and, we hoped, a sea change in the way in which such issues are addressed.
	I welcome amendment No. 1. It is important that CMEC is transparent about its arrangements with other suppliers. We need to know if it is using debt collection agencies or if it makes arrangements with computer suppliers. In the past, the CSA's arrangements were not as transparent as they should have been, and expectations were raised—for example, about how much debt collection agencies would collect—and then not met. I hope that with greater scrutiny—which CMEC will receive—we will be able to question suppliers and ensure the accountability to this House to which we are entitled.
	On Report, the Minister said that amendments would be tabled in the other place to give CMEC Crown status. We know, because this was one of the first Bills to receive public scrutiny, that the staff want that, and it is a sensible move. However, I am not clear—other than from the Minister's claim that there will be a general review of Crown status—why he has added the provision about a review after three years. It is quite clear that if there is a change of Government policy, not only in the Department for Work and Pensions but across the piece, that change should be made through a statement in this House that cites the reasons for it. Having gone through quite a sea change in terms of the way in which payments are collected, it is clearly unsettling for staff to face the prospect in three years' time of the possibility of being subject yet again to a review. I am still not clear about how the proposal will affect the status and conditions of the civil servants—I understand that they will remain civil servants while they work for the Crown. I do not think that the review is helpful. The Minister needs to give a clear statement that the current status will continue.
	Yes, the Government might announce a change in the future. If, in three years' time, the Minister were to announce a review of the operation of CMEC, that would be totally different. However, it is unhelpful to the staff to talk at this stage about merely reviewing that status after three years, because that does not help them with their task of tackling child poverty.
	One subject that has not been mentioned, which was raised by my noble Friend Lord Kirkwood in the other place, is VAT. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that another factor in the Department's consideration of the amendment was that VAT would be payable if the commission were a non-departmental public body, but that if it were a Crown body the £140 million would not be payable. If it seems that someone had not budgeted for that, perhaps the Minister could confirm whether it was a factor in the changes that have now been proposed?
	In conclusion, I welcome the changes, but the Minister needs to reassure us about why the review in three years' time is necessary without an overall change in Government policy, and I have not seen an announcement that that will take place. The prospect of such a review is clearly unsettling to staff and it will not help them in their difficult job of collecting the outstanding old debt as well as getting a new system up and running.

Oliver Heald: The history of the status of the commission in the Bill says a great deal about leadership, or the lack of it. We have seen a history of attempts to shirk responsibility and of dithering.
	First, on the point about shirking responsibility, it was not by chance that Lord McKenzie talked about distancing from failure. The change is not an attempt to distance the new commission from failure, but an attempt by the Government to distance themselves from the work of child support bodies in this country. We know that over the years there has been a litany of failure in the Child Support Agency, which was not the fault of the staff but was, if anything, the fault of the House. The Bills that have been passed have not succeeded and the computers that have been purchased have not worked. We all know, looking at the work of the CSA, that nobody could be proud of it. There have been some improvements over time, but the fact remains that it has a sad history.
	I am convinced that the Government originally set up the commission as a non-departmental public body—it was not part of the state and did not have civil servants working for it—as an attempt to distance the Government from a body that had failed in the past and from a new body that risked failure in the future. The history of child support in this country has shown that it has proved extremely difficult to get parents to pay for their children, particularly parents who do not have very high incomes.
	This measure is therefore an example of an attempt to shirk responsibility. I do not think that it is right that the Government should do that. If they are performing an executive function, which is what this is all about, it should be carried out by an executive body. The staff employed by the executive body should be civil servants, as they are now. Such an attempt to pretend that the body is nothing to do with the Government is part of the "Not me, guv" culture and it is wrong. Governments should not do such things. Ministers should take responsibility for the functions that their Departments and their civil servants deal with, and they should not try to shirk them in the way that the Bill attempts to do.

John Bercow: My hon. Friend makes his case with his characteristic understatement. The Minister has been very courteous, but the reasoning behind any prospective change in three years' time remains distinctly opaque. Given that any change would be announced—under the affirmative procedure, admittedly—only to a small Committee sitting upstairs, of which most Members of Parliament, let alone most members of the public, would be entirely oblivious, does my hon. Friend not think that the Government ought to state this afternoon on the Floor of the House what criteria would trigger a change?

Oliver Heald: My hon. Friend has come to a very important point—it is the third point that I want to make, but I will deal with it now—about Lords amendment No. 2, which states:
	"If, on a review under this section, it appears to the Secretary of State appropriate to do so, the Secretary of State may by order made by statutory instrument provide that the Commission is to cease to be a Crown body... An order under subsection (6) may...make any amendment to Schedule 1 that appears to...be necessary or expedient",
	and it may apply the transfer of undertakings regulations, and so on. So if the Minister decides in three years' time that he wants to change great chunks of the Bill, he can do so in a little Committee upstairs, as my hon. Friend says, without the full and proper scrutiny that the staff would expect, that we expect and that the British public are entitled to expect. That is a hole-in-the-corner way of doing things.
	My hon. Friend thinks that I am slightly overstating my case—I got the mood of his comments—but Parliament should feel passionate about the annoying fact that such important decisions, which affect millions of people in the way that the child support arrangements do and which affect important civil service staff who are entitled to expect Ministers to stick up for them and to treat them decently, should be dealt with unconstitutionally. That is my view.

John Bercow: I certainly would not accuse my hon. Friend of overstatement at any stage. We in the Opposition may be right or we may be wrong on this point—naturally, it is in the nature of holding an opinion that we think that we are right—but does he not accept that, whatever may be said of our position on this matter, it is not motivated by party political considerations? We all entertain the very highest regard for my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who may well occupy an important post, wielding immense power with great discretion and judgment, but we do not want him to exercise this sort of Henry VIII power, and I rather doubt whether he would want to exercise it.

Oliver Heald: That is exactly the point, and my hon. Friend is right to use the expression "Henry VIII power". Historically, the House has been very jealous not to give away Henry VIII powers that change great parts of primary legislation simply by regulation. The Government have been very careless about that. One remembers the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, which a number of us were involved with. Luckily, we managed to persuade the Government not to introduce something so draconian. The fact is that the Government are well prepared to entertain such powers, which Parliament has traditionally assumed. Let us consider the proposals that we will get next week. I will not go into them in detail, but this is all part of a pattern of removing ancient liberties without enough thought or consideration.
	My other point about leadership is that dithering is a decision in itself. Not making a decision is a decision if someone is in government and in a position of leadership. The Government have got form under this Prime Minister for dithering badly. There was the election and Northern Rock, and now we see in the Bill another example of dithering. What does that say to the civil servants, who are expected to work for the Government—that their position is uncertain for a year during the consideration of the Bill and that Ministers are prepared to throw away civil servants' pensions, pay and rations on a whim? When the Government finally come to their senses and decide that they will keep the civil servants doing the job, they do not even make a definite decision; they say, "Oh well, we'll have another look at it in three years' time," and if they want to take away the Crown status, all the civil servants can just lose their status and all the important aspects of their role can be lost in a Committee upstairs. Thank goodness the affirmative procedure will apply, but it does not say much for the Government that such important decisions should be taken in that way.
	I hope that, as my hon. Friend asked, the Minister will now explain—this is my final point—the criteria for the review. Will he set them out now? What is really going on? Will he come clean with the House?

Michael Weir: The hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) said that we started on the Bill a year ago; somehow it seems a lot longer than that, although we had an enjoyable and informative Committee stage, in which we got through a lot. When I saw the Lords amendments, I was slightly disappointed that their lordships had not given me the opportunity to dust down my old arguments about the Scottish minutes of agreement and had not given me one last chance to persuade the Minister how wrong he is on that issue. The Bill misses an opportunity. I still have some of the reservations that I expressed in Committee, sometimes at fair length.

Andrew Selous: We supported you.

Michael Weir: I did get some support, and I was very grateful for it at the time. I am sorry that this is one of the issues on which the Government have not seen sense. Having said that, I am pleased to see some of the amendments on the amendment paper, and that the combined arguments of the Opposition in Committee carried some weight and had results at later stages; some of the issues that we addressed have been returned to.
	On clause 2, I am pleased that the Government have gone a considerable way towards addressing the concerns raised regarding the status of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, but I share many of the concerns already expressed on that point, particularly regarding the three-year period. I have considerable experience of dealing with the Child Support Agency, both as a solicitor and latterly as a Member of Parliament. I have always found the staff to be as helpful as they can be but, over the years, they have put up with horrendous problems with the computer system and, frankly, with some incompetent management. That is reflected in many ways, including in the morale of staff in many offices, and in staff turnover. I remember visiting one centre where there was very high staff turnover—I cannot remember the exact figure—because of the pressure that staff were under, both in the job and because of the reaction of the public with whom they had to deal. The public had to deal only with the person on the coal face, and not with the computer system or the management behind the organisation.
	I am pleased that the Government have accepted that the staff should remain civil servants. I note what the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) says about making changes in a Committee Room upstairs, but he cannot have been subject to the campaign waged by the unions on the position of their members in the CSA. I am sure that debate on such a subject would not slip past unnoticed in a Committee Room upstairs without mass lobbying of the House by members of the unions, who are deeply concerned about the status of their members in the CSA. They perhaps saw the proposal as a bridgehead showing things to come. They, and many other organisations, will be watching closely any changes that are proposed.

Oliver Heald: But does not the hon. Gentleman agree that public service is important, and that the ethos of civil servants, and the way in which they work, particularly when they are in a difficult role, as they are in the case of the Child Support Agency, is important and something for which we should stand up? I do not criticise the unions for what they are doing; I think that they are right.

Michael Weir: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I was not criticising the unions. I was just pointing out that they have been assiduous in protecting the interests of their members in the CSA and, I am sure, in other Government Departments. They will watch like hawks for any attempt to change the status of the commission or of any other Department.
	I agree that the provision for a three-year review raises great suspicions that the move is merely an attempt to kick the issue into the long grass for a wee while and to get around the problem. The Minister shakes his head, but if that is not the case, why put in the provision at all? The Government could at any time bring forward legislation to change the status of the commission or any other civil service body. Why provide for a three-year review unless there is a deliberate intention to revisit the issue at the end of the initial period, and perhaps to attempt to make the change in a manner that will not be brought to public notice? I think that such an attempt would fail.
	Staff morale has been bad in many parts of the CSA. The proposal will leave staff in a difficult position. It will create continuing uncertainty about the future, although there might be relief that the original plan is not being implemented. The issue may not be resolved in three years, with an ongoing review further down the line. The CSA was undermined by uncertainty, low staff morale and the failure of the computer system. We need the commission to be grounded, to have proper resources and to make sure that the work is done, without the distraction of the many failings that the CSA had. I accept that the Government have moved considerably to meet the objections to their original proposal, but the continuing uncertainty is regrettable.

James Plaskitt: I shall try to respond to the points that have been raised in the debate on the first group of amendments.
	In respect of HMRC data, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) asked about the commission helping other Government Departments. The commission has a stake in any Department looking after the interests of children, especially where family separation has occurred. It will probably be highly relevant for the commission to exchange information with the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which will help with programmes in which the Department is involved, such as Sure Start, children's centres and so on. Wherever there is a shared interest in services for children, especially for those from a fractured family background, I would expect the commission to co-operate with other bodies.
	The hon. Gentleman asked me how many other non-departmental public bodies had Crown status. There are three others—the Health and Safety Commission, the Health and Safety Executive and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. The commission will join them, forming a small group out of 200 NDPBs. The commission is by far the largest of those bodies; the others that I mentioned are considerably smaller.

Andrew Selous: I was under the impression that the Health and Safety Commission had just been wound up into the Health and Safety Executive. That would leave two such bodies out of the total number of NDPBs, which makes the point that I made earlier.

James Plaskitt: It makes the point that I was making as well—that there is a small number of such NDPBs. We are adding the commission to them for reasons that I have set out. It will join a couple of others in that position.
	I shall return to the three-year review, but first I shall deal with some of the other points. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) asked whether the position on value added tax was the reason for the decision. It was part of the reason, but by no means the dominant or sole reason. Yes, he was right to point out that it was one of the consequences attendant upon the proposal. The amount of VAT liability that he mentioned was considerably higher than I believe it is. Nevertheless, it was one of the factors that weighed in the balance. The views of the staff of the agency were dominant in that decision.
	The hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) tried to tempt me back into the realm of the 12-month rule. I have discovered that the rule is that we must spend 12 months discussing the matter. We have done that for 12 months, and that is enough, so I will not go back into it, interesting and enjoyable though our long debates on the subject were. I hope that he will forgive me, but I think that I would be out of order in any case because the amendment on that has not been selected.
	I am afraid that I was disappointed by the contribution from the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald).  [ Interruption. ] He may well be a fine man, but I found that he was trying to hang rather wider political points on to the amendments. He said that going for non-departmental public body status was all about Ministers shirking responsibility. It is not. I urge him to look again at the rules that relate to NDPBs. In the case of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, as in the case of similar bodies, Ministers will still be ultimately responsible for what goes on. The NDPB is set up by statute law. It is ultimately answerable to the relevant Minister in the Department, who in turn is answerable to the House of Commons. The idea that there is a shirking of responsibility is therefore not appropriate at all.
	I will rehearse for the hon. Gentleman a couple of the primary reasons that we felt it was right to move to this status. First, the Bill breaks the statutory link that ties the CSA to the benefits system, whereby at the moment any parent with care going on to benefit automatically gets referred to it because of the interaction between the rules on benefit and the rules on child maintenance. The repeal of section 6 of the Child Support Act 1991 breaks that link, which is a fundamental reason why an agency is no longer necessary. Moreover, once established as an NDBP, the commissioners can focus exclusively and entirely on the task that they are set by the Bill—namely, the collection of maintenance money for children. They no longer have to be concerned, as senior officials running an Executive agency have to be concerned, with other objectives of the Department. There are clear structural advantages in placing the commission in this position.
	What slightly puzzles me about this debate is that my clear recollection is that in Committee the switch to NDPB status was fully supported by the Conservatives, but I am beginning to detect that there may be some rowing back from that. I am not sure why that is. It seems to be something of a change in position from the one that I understood them to have when we debated this in Committee.

Andrew Selous: I think that the Bill may have begun its course when some of my other hon. Friends were occupying shadow DWP positions. If I may refer the Minister back to columns 3 and 4 of the Public Bill Committee debate of 17 July 2007, he will find that my second and third questions were about why there was a need to change CMEC's role from being an Executive agency of the DWP. It is an issue that we have raised throughout the Bill's passage.

James Plaskitt: Absolutely; I do not deny that for a moment. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues certainly raised questions about it, and we had a prolonged discussion, but I do not recall them raising any objections—which is a different matter—or suggesting that it was an inappropriate decision or the wrong direction to take. Of course he raised questions, as he should, but he did not object to it.

Oliver Heald: I am sorry to have disappointed the Minister earlier. Nevertheless, does he not agree that the effect of the arrangements that he proposed, at least initially, was to distance the new body from Ministers relative to the situation that we have at the moment? There is no doubt that an executive agency is much closer to Ministers, as part of the Department, than what he proposed originally or proposes now. It is a more distant arrangement, as Lord McKenzie said.

James Plaskitt: It is distant, but that does not mean, as the hon. Gentleman previously implied, that Ministers have shirked responsibility. Yes, a greater distance is involved and the commissioners running the NDPB have greater autonomy than senior officials running an agency, but the ultimate link of accountability, which is established by the legislation, is not broken.

Oliver Heald: rose—

James Plaskitt: I shall give way once more, and then I want to return to answering the points raised in the debate.

Oliver Heald: The Minister is being generous, and I am happy to make this my last intervention.
	If the Minister accepts that the relationship is more distant for Ministers than the one that went before, is he not also saying that Ministers are taking less responsibility? If that is the case—as it must be, logically—is he not distancing himself from failure, as Lord McKenzie said?

James Plaskitt: That is not the way I was taught logic. It does not mean that at all. The relationship can be more distant in terms of the taking of day-to-day operational decisions. There may be a greater distance from Ministers in that they will not have to sign off such decisions, but that does not water down in any sense the ultimate ministerial responsibility for what happens. The commission is given by statute—by Parliament—the core objectives that it has to achieve. Ministers will then set targets to turn those objectives into deliverable realities. Whether that happens or not remains ultimately the responsibility of a Minister who is accountable to Parliament. There is no shirking of responsibility; I hope that I have satisfied the hon. Gentleman on that point.
	I want to wrap up by returning to the three-year review, which seems to have concerned hon. Members. I shall try to resolve this matter, as well. The three-year review is not a new idea that we came up with in the later stages of the passage of the Bill. The argument that some Members used to underline their concern is that the review will somehow unsettle the staff of the agency. Let me make it clear that I have had meetings with hundreds of the agency's staff. They know that the process is subject to a review, and they have always been clear about that. They have welcomed our decision to give Crown status, and they have always known that it is a renewable decision. The review has not in any way diminished their welcome of what we have done; they understand the way we are proceeding.
	As I said when introducing this group of amendments, in any subsequent review, the issue that will dominate will be the position of the staff. It is sensible to suggest that there might be a review because there might be a wider cross-government review of Crown status, but there are also issues specific to the commission. After three years, the new body will have had time to settle down: staff will be more familiar with the way in which it operates; issues about terms and conditions will have become much clearer; the size of the staffing that the commission wants will be clearer; its business plan will be apparent; and its performance will have settled down. In that sense, some of the issues that have given staff concern with regard to the disappearance of civil staff status may no longer concern them, in the light of three years' worth of experience of operating in the commission. That is another reason it makes sense to review the process.
	The review will not be done furtively or secretively. The provisions are in the Bill, and everyone knows that a review will take place. Any change has to come through affirmative resolutions, as we have already established. We are being completely transparent on the matter, and it is understood why that has to be the case. It has not been a difficulty for the staff as some hon. Members have suggested. I am satisfied—I genuinely want to reassure hon. Members about this—that staff are pleased with the decision we have made, and support it, given all the conditions that I have just outlined. If Members care to check for themselves, they will find confirmation of that view.
	I hope that I have responded to the points raised in the debate and that the amendments will be approved.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 5 agreed to.
	New Clause
	 Lords amendment: No. 6

James Plaskitt: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments Nos. 90 to 92, 97, 101, 105, 118 and 119.

James Plaskitt: This group of amendments relates to the assessment and collection of child maintenance, and the commission's responsibilities in dealing with concerns raised about the parent with care's ability to obtain the right level of child maintenance.
	Lords amendment No. 6 places a duty on the commission to make investigations into any application from the parent with care for a variation to the maintenance assessment, if it is clear that further evidence would help the commission to decide whether a variation should be made. Currently, few applications for variations from parents with care are successful. Often, that is because the parent with care simply does not have the information necessary to show the agency why the variation should be made.
	The amendment requires the commission to consider further information or evidence that is or could be available to it, including by reference to information that it is already in possession of, where it appears to the commission that to do so may affect its decision in respect of the variation. That will become particularly relevant once the data-sharing provisions with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs are in place, as the commission may well have better access to information that would support the variation than the parent with care. The commission will be able to conduct investigations using information already held, for example by HMRC, or to seek fresh information from other sources, such as accountants, employers or credit reference agencies. This adjustment to policy was made in response to representations from groups representing parents with care, who find the current system inflexible and open to manipulation by unscrupulous non-resident parents who seek to conceal their real income from both the parent with care and the Child Support Agency.
	A further amendment enables the disclosure to the commission of information provided in the context of family proceedings in court that is likely to be relevant to the commission's child maintenance functions. Currently, such disclosure brings with it a risk of contempt of court. That risk is removed by the amendment. This proposal was welcomed on both sides during the Committee stage in another place. To give a practical example of how it can help, there are cases—for example, in ancillary relief proceedings on divorce cases—where a non-resident parent discloses information on court documents about his or her income, or where the court makes a finding regarding the non-resident parent's financial circumstances, property or assets that were not previously known. Currently, that information cannot be passed to the Child Support Agency, which has to seek it again from scratch. The commission, by contrast, will be able to receive and use that information without risk of contempt of court.
	The final amendment is a drafting correction and ensures that the commission has access to information on contributions held by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. That is to ensure consistency with arrangements already in place for the Child Support Agency. I commend the amendments to the House.

Andrew Selous: The official Opposition welcome the amendments in the second group, which, as the Minister said, cover three areas. Getting the assessments right is vital to the success of the commission. I am sure that the Minister will agree that the problems of the past were largely to do with the fact that the assessments were so ropey that they were disputed and delayed, and the parents who should have received the money did not receive it when they should have. The failure to get that right in the past has been at the heart of much of the CSA's difficulties.
	Lords amendment No. 6 is clearly sensible in ensuring that the commission will be able to consider additional information or evidence where that appears appropriate, before deciding applications for variations made by a parent with care or, in Scotland, by a child over the age of 12. That prompts one to ask why the amendment is needed. One would have thought and hoped that the Child Support Agency would always have available to it the latest relevant data when determining variations of maintenance, but, as we said in our discussions on the first group of amendments, perhaps some of us in this place did not do our job properly in relation to previous legislation. We should have made sure that such information was available to the CSA.
	The second sub-group of amendments in this group relates to the passage of information between the family courts and the commission. The amendments will allow parties to specified family proceedings to disclose relevant information to the commission, which is clearly sensible. I am sure that the absence of those provisions from current legislation has hindered the CSA's work in the past. The general issue is about ensuring that the commission and the family courts work hand in hand and do not work against each other to undo their good work.
	This is not the occasion on which to revisit the thorny issue of the 12-month rule—indeed, you would not allow it, Mr. Deputy Speaker—so I shall not go down that route. I hope that the Minister agrees that it is important to ensure that the family courts and the commission are not at war. They are basically in the same business: dealing with the tragic circumstances and trauma that occur when families split up, such as the need for specific care for children and, crucially, the need to ensure that the right amount of money gets through to the right parents. We support that.
	The Minister was quite brief on amendments Nos. 118 and 119, which are, as he said, crucial to making sure that there is the fullest possible co-operation between HMRC and the commission. I have looked into the legislation that affects the information gateway between the tax authorities and the current CSA, and I believe that one of the most useful things that we can do this afternoon is to tease out why it has not worked in the past. We are not expecting any Divisions, so I ask the Minister to give maximum co-operation regarding my concerns on this issue.
	It worries me—I say this to hon. Members on both sides of the House—that we are in the habit in this place of passing legislation, not using it fully and then passing more laws when things do not work. I have uncovered information that is directly relevant to amendments Nos. 118 and 119. I do not know whether the Minister is familiar with section 80 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, which Labour passed two years after it came to power. He is not nodding, so I shall give him a gentle introduction to it.  [Interruption.] Perhaps he is familiar with it; I am delighted to hear that, but for the benefit of the House, I shall point out that section 80 places a requirement on the tax authorities and the CSA to pass information to each other about the earnings of self-employed earners. The explanatory notes to the Act state:
	"This provision allows the Inland Revenue, on a discretionary basis, to supply tax information it holds in respect of self-employed non-resident parents to the Child Support Agency (CSA). This is intended to enable the CSA to build up a financial picture of non-resident parents whose earnings either are not known or need to be verified."
	That sounds excellent and sensible, but the information that I have, from talking to HMRC staff who have been seconded to the CSA and who deal with my constituents' CSA matters, is that that is not working. It worries me that Lords amendments Nos. 118 and 119 refer to this very area of co-operation between HMRC and the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, despite the fact that we have passed measures on precisely the same subject not so long ago, and that those measures are not working as they should do.
	I should like to illustrate this argument with three points. First, HMRC has its own construction industry system of record keeping, to which the CSA should be entitled to have access in regard to self-employed parents. However, I have received information that that is not the case, and that when form 721—which could provide the relevant construction industry information—is filled in electronically, those data are denied to CSA staff, who cannot therefore make a correct assessment and make the child support system work properly. What is the point of having legislation on the statute book if there is imperfect co-operation—or none at all—between HMRC and the CSA?
	I did not give the Minister prior warning that I was going to raise this matter today, but it is a serious issue and I ask him perhaps to meet me afterwards and to look into the matter. The premise of the Bill is largely based on having better and fuller co-operation between HMRC and the CSA. In a recent parliamentary question, I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer
	"what access HM Revenue and Customs staff seconded to the Child Support Agency have to HM Revenue and Customs data systems while on secondment".—[ Official Report, 18 May 2008; Vol. 475, c. 1849W.]
	The answer was that they have none, which was surprising.
	Secondly, I have discovered that HMRC charges the CSA for information supplied on referrals—the charge is £3.79 per referral—whereas banks and other financial institutions have to supply that information for free. It seems pointless to have money going from one Government Department to another—that money has to be audited, and there are costs involved with that—when both the Departments involved should be co-operating fully with each other to ensure that the right money gets through to the right parents for the benefit of the children concerned.
	Thirdly, will the Minister confirm with his colleagues in the Treasury that, when an IDG 43000 form is signed by a non-resident parent, it will trigger full co-operation between HMRC and the CSA? My information is that staff involved in the central policy information strategy at HMRC are not co-operative on this issue. There is no hope of Lords amendments Nos. 118 and 119 being successful if we do not get these co-operation issues sorted out. There is no point in passing more legislation when the present legislation is not being properly used. That does not fill me with confidence that the co-operation between HMRC and the staff at CMEC will be more effective in the future.
	As I said earlier, I do not expect the Minister to have at his fingertips any detailed information on relations between his Department and the Treasury, or between the staff at HMRC and the CSA, but when he replies to this debate, I would be most grateful if he assured me that he takes the issue seriously and recognises that it is of the greatest importance that we get this right if we are going to make the CMEC work successfully. We both want the same thing—namely, to get the system to work—and, as I have said, I have current information from HMRC staff seconded to the CSA and who are dealing with my constituents that the system is not working satisfactorily at the moment.

Paul Rowen: I, too, welcome the amendments. I am sure the Minister recalls that in Committee we also raised concerns about ensuring that all income is taken account of when an assessment is being made, and we provided examples of cases.
	The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) talked in particular about the construction industry and examples involving self-employed people in which it was quite clear that not all the information was being made available to the CSA. Therefore, the parent with care was not getting their full entitlement. Any steps that the Minister can take to ensure that when further information is made available it is not just accepted but properly investigated will be pertinent to the success of CMEC.
	The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire made some relevant points about the operation of the CSA and the arrangement with HMRC. In Committee, we strongly laboured the point about the lack of consistency between the two Government agencies in ensuring that such information is made available. The Minister assured us that that would take place. I hope that the amendment and the new arrangements achieve proper follow-through on that. He knows as well as I do the figures on the amounts of money that are not being collected and the effect that that has on child poverty.
	It is clearly important to all of us in the House that we have proper arrangements in place, so I welcome the amendment, which recognises that a parent with care can put forward more information and that the commission will properly investigate it. As the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said, we need assurances on how the gateway between departments is working, because clearly it is not working at the moment and there is no point putting new legislation in place if we are not going to get it working.
	On amendment No. 90, I again welcome the way the proposals are going with regard to disclosure of information through the family courts. As has been said, it is important that the family courts and the commission work closely together. Those are often difficult times for families, particularly the parent with care. Emotions are running high and lots of things are going on, so it is clearly important that the commission has access to information that will be revealed during any divorce settlement and that could materially affect the assessment that CMEC makes.
	I want to question the Minister further on a matter that my noble Friend Lord Kirkwood raised in the other place. It relates to amendment No. 90, proposed new section 49AA(2)(c) and the use of the word "reasonably". The amendment says:
	"This section applies if...the party reasonably considers that the information is relevant to the exercise of the Commission's functions relating to child support in relation to the child."
	If the commission was seeking information from the court, I could understand that it ought to act "reasonably" and not go on a wild goose chase, but we are talking about "the party"—that is, the person who may well want the commission to look at information revealed during family court proceedings. I do not want a clause in the Bill being used as a loophole for the parent without care to get out of supplying information that could lead to a better settlement being provided for the parent with care.
	I would have thought that the parent with care, acting as the guardian of the child, would clearly be acting reasonably because they would want to put before the commission all information that would enable them to get a proper settlement, which would enable them to bring up the child properly. Conversely, the parent without care may not want to act reasonably, because he or she will not want to provide such information.
	While the word "reasonably" may itself sound reasonable, it rings alarm bells for me. I can imagine the parent without care going to the court and saying, "It is unreasonable for that information to be provided." It should be for the commission to decide what is reasonable. The Bill states what information it can and cannot seek. We are not talking about debt collections, or information that could allow third parties to gain access to people's financial affairs. I agree with my noble Friend that the amendment is unnecessary, and sets alarm bells ringing in relation to why it is there in the first place. I hope that the Minister can clarify the issue, because I do not think that it was dealt with satisfactorily in the other place.

Oliver Heald: How will the data-matching proposed in Lords amendments Nos. 118 and 119 take place? Will it be possible to match records on the Inland Revenue and national insurance computers electronically with the commission's records on a "class" basis? Would the records of a class of absent parents who had not been making payments be run against the records on the national insurance recording computer?
	How will this power be used? Have any contracts yet been let to computer companies or similar organisations? What will be the scale of the matching, in terms of numbers? Does the Minister envisage thousands of cases being matched each year, or will only a small number of individual cases be involved? Will he tell us a little more about the Government's thinking? What has been agreed with the Revenue, and what contracts are in prospect?

Charles Walker: I did not serve on the Committee, but I was interested in the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous).
	Obviously, when a divorce and separation take place the situation is extremely traumatic and emotional for all parties, but too often the need of the child is lost in the feuding between the two adults. I am especially concerned about the under-declaration of income by the self-employed. Divorced constituents have come to see me, women—usually—whose husbands were in well-paid jobs earning upwards of £50,000 a year, but whose annual income has suddenly and miraculously dropped to £10,000. Clearly their payments towards the upkeep of their child or children do not reflect either their earning potential or their actual earnings.
	I am horrified that people can simply walk away from their responsibilities to their children. I know of one case in which two sets of lawyers are going at each other hammer and tongs trying to ascertain an individual's genuine earnings. The Child Support Agency cannot take any further action to recover meaningful amounts of money for the child's mother because it cannot prove that this gentleman's earnings are in excess of £10,000, although only weeks before the divorce they were £50,000 per annum.
	I hope that, when income levels are in dispute, it will be possible for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs to produce tax records so that a realistic amount can be paid towards children's upkeep after a separation.

James Plaskitt: We have had a useful debate. I agree with the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) about the importance of co-ordination between the courts and the commission. As he said, they are ultimately in the same business, and we shall seek to ensure that there is sufficient co-operation between them.
	We have had a fair amount of discussion on the exchange of information between HMRC and the CSA, or the commission in the future. I hear the concerns that have been raised about the way in which the exchange operates currently. The collaboration and exchange of information is critical and the links have to work. HMRC data are important to enable the agency now and the commission in the future to deliver the kind of effective maintenance agreements that we all want to see in place. Already HMRC data are being deployed and, in many cases, are helping the agency to establish the whereabouts of the non-resident parent.
	The information is also helping the agency to establish the real income levels of a non-resident parent because, as the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) has indicated, many non-resident parents sadly will resort to all sorts of tactics and subterfuge to try to conceal income and, let us be blunt, will tell barefaced lies to the agency about what they earn. HMRC may have more robust information on income that is much harder for the individual to conceal. The exchange of that information will clearly be crucial to help us ensure in future that we have robust maintenance agreements in place that deliver.
	The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) asked about the extent of data matching and the exchange of information that will be required. This will be a matter for the commission, once it is established as a proper legal entity, to discuss with HMRC. They will want to draw up a protocol about how they will achieve the exchange of information. He asked on what scale the exchange will be. I anticipate that it will be on quite a large scale because we are looking for a robust system that ensures that we have accurate information about non-resident parents' true levels of income. There will be hundreds of thousands of people in the system, so I imagine the exchange will be on a significant scale, but the technicalities as to how that will be done will be caught in any protocol agreed between the commission and HMRC once the commission is in a position to initiate these negotiations.

Andrew Selous: There is also the issue of expenses. Section 80 of the Child Support Act 1991 did not mention charging. My information is that HMRC charges £3.79 per referral. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire, the Minister said that the exchange could be extensive. Has CMEC in its preliminary budgets put in a couple of million pounds to pay HMRC? Is that sensible? Do we really want money going from one Department to another in this way?

James Plaskitt: Interestingly we are now going back to the discussion from the first group of amendments on the extent of ministerial involvement. One of the reasons for going for a NDPB was that negotiations of that sort no longer require ministerial approval. The commission will be anticipating the need to have a provision in place to meet that requirement. The extent of it and the terms of any negotiation between the commission and HMRC will be for the commission. I cannot anticipate what it will say about that. It is very much an issue that the commission will have to sort out with HMRC, but it is aware of the context in which that exchange will operate.

Nadine Dorries: I am delighted to hear that the cross-referencing of data will be robust, but one way of using that information less would be for the Government to get the message out to absent parents that it will be difficult in future to avoid providing information or making payments. Many of my cases are fathers who do not feel that they should be paying at all for their children and feel they are being unfairly charged. As well as putting these systems in place, should there not be some method of providing a wider message to the general public to let them know that the system will become much more robust and tougher?

James Plaskitt: The hon. Lady raises an interesting point. One thing that has bedevilled the agency's performance in this respect is what I sometimes refer to as reputational harm. Unfortunately, too many non-resident parents who do not have—shall we say—a high inclination to pay have come to believe that if they duck and weave for long enough and are canny enough about what they do, the agency will not get them. There has been a certain culture in that regard among a minority of non-resident parents who refuse to own up to their obligations; it has been the talk in the bar room, as it were. That has been damaging and harmful and has served only to encourage non-resident parents who do not want to face up to their responsibility. She is right: they need to understand that that is not an option. Yes, the relationship may have ended, but the responsibility does not. The agency—in future, the commission—is going to ensure that the culture changes and that there is not an option of walking away from that responsibility.
	I think that that is already starting to happen. We do not have to wait for the commission to come into existence for there to be new and tougher enforcement powers or more effective action. That is already happening in respect of the agency, which, as the hon. Lady may well know, is taking a record number of actions against non-resident parents. In the last year, some 114,000 individual sanction-type actions were taken against non-payers. She will also know that, armed with the additional powers that we have already given it, the agency is collecting a record amount of maintenance. The maintenance collected has just passed £1 billion a year for the first time in the agency's history. She will also know that it is collecting record levels of arrears—£120 million in the past year—and that arrears are now growing at the slowest rate ever.
	Some of the new powers that we have already given the agency are quite simple ones, such as the ability to collect outstanding arrears over the phone. While the agency official is in conversation with the non-resident parent, they can say, "By the way, the arrears are such and such. We now have powers to come after you and get this. If you want to pay us now using your debit card, you can do so." It is amazing how successful that has been. That simple measure has brought in more than £20 million in arrears already. Also, the fact that the agency can now inform non-resident parents who have not been paying that that power exists and could be used has encouraged them simply to pay up, in recognition of the fact that if they try to delay any longer, the situation will get worse for them. The mere arrival of a letter saying, "We might have to refer your debt to a private collection agency", has caused them collectively to hand over £6 million, because they do not want the debt collection agency on them.
	The hon. Lady is therefore right, in that the message has to be very strong to non-resident parents that non-payment is not an option. What makes that a strong message is their understanding and awareness that the agency—the commission to be—has very strong powers and they cannot escape its establishing their true income position. Moreover, once it has that knowledge, it has behind it painful enforcement powers, should the non-resident parent think that they can go on ducking. So the switch in credibility, backed with stronger enforcement powers, is already delivering far higher levels of compliance and payment, and the new commission will acquire even more powers on top of those already given to the agency. The message is therefore changing and will continue to change. Her point is well made.

Oliver Heald: Is it part of the thinking on amendments Nos. 118 and 119 that if national insurance records can be checked, the commission will be aware much more quickly that somebody has started work? Is that the reason regarding national insurance contributions, or is it locating people, or a bit of both?

James Plaskitt: It is a mixture of both. Of course, one of the tricks that the unwilling non-resident parent sometimes gets up to is constantly moving employment, but also literally constantly moving. I see nods around the Chamber, and I have had such cases in my constituency. Such movement makes it incredibly difficult for the agency to catch up with people who are pulling every stunt available to avoid payment. The more the information is at the commission's disposal to keep tabs on those individuals, the harder it will be for them to evade their responsibility.

Andrew Selous: Will the Minister give way?

James Plaskitt: If it is on the point that we are discussing.

Andrew Selous: I have been listening carefully to the Minister. Perhaps I missed it, but I have not heard him say that he will examine the three specific cases I mentioned where non co-operation is taking place. He praised co-operation where it takes place and he expressed the reasons for it, but I cited three specific ways in which it is not working. I was told about them just this morning by an HMRC member who has been seconded to the CSA. I am greatly worried and would like to hear that the Minister will take some action and perhaps meet me to discuss the issues.

James Plaskitt: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon, because I meant to cover that point. The information that I have been given is that six HMRC tax inspectors have been seconded to the agency and they are in six different locations. I understand that they are helping agency staff to deal with the particularly vexed issue of working out how to assess the income of self-employed non-resident parents, which has been mentioned. He has raised specific concerns about areas where he thinks that that might not be working, and I shall examine those. I should have given him that reassurance, and I am happy to do so now.

Charles Walker: Let us consider a situation in which a self-employed individual is declaring an income of £10,000, which is considerably less than they are probably earning, and they then realise a capital asset of £1 million but that cannot be included in the settlement. That asset has a notional income—if it is invested in the stock market or in a high-yielding savings account—of about £50,000 a year. Is there any way of taking such income into consideration when coming up with settlements?

James Plaskitt: Yes. If the hon. Gentleman is able to stay for further considerations this afternoon, he will see that we are coming to that very point. I am grateful to him for raising it, but I offer him that little tempter to follow the proceedings even further.
	I do not think that there is the loophole that the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) fears, and I want to reassure him on that. The reason we think it important to include the word "reasonably" in respect of information from the parent with care is, as he might realise if he were to think about some of the cases that he has seen, that it is still an important safeguard to have in place. We are often dealing with individuals who have resentments against the former partner, for one reason or another, following the break up of the relationship. It is possible even for the parent with care sometimes to continue taking perhaps vindictive or vexatious action against the person who has become the non-resident parent.
	If any submission could be made by the parent with care to the commission to further a dispute about a real level of income without there being any grounds to sustain it, there is a risk that the commission would be swamped with all sorts of initiatives to go after establishing true income levels when there is no robust evidence to suggest that the non-resident parent is trying to mislead the commission. It is sensible for us to require that the commission initiates investigative action of that sort, and we are strengthening its duty to do so, as I think the hon. Gentleman realises, but it is reasonable that we should in turn require the parent with care to put up reasonable grounds for suggesting that the commission should do that. That means that we will keep the commission efficient and its efforts concentrated on where they are likely to produce results.

Paul Rowen: I would accept that point if the word "reasonably" were in Lords amendment No. 6, but it is in Lords amendment No. 90, which amends information about proceedings available in family courts. They are a matter of record; the information will have been put before the family courts. We cannot introduce any more information, and I honestly do not see why there is a need to include the word "reasonably". The information is either there or not there; it can be put before the commission, which can consider it or not. The word "reasonably" makes no difference other than to the other side if it wants to avoid that information being made available.

James Plaskitt: I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the inclusion of that word does not in any way water down the obligation on the parties for full and free disclosure of information during the court proceedings. Failure to do so would be a contempt of court.
	I think that I have covered all the points raised and I hope that the amendments will secure the approval of the House.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 21
	 — 
	Current account deduction orders

Lords amendment: No. 7.

James Plaskitt: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments Nos. 8 to 85, 96, 98, 99, 102 and 122.

James Plaskitt: This group of amendments relates to the powers available to the commission to tackle non-resident parents who continually fail to meet their financial responsibilities to their children. A particularly important suite of measures in the Bill allows the commission to target non-payers directly through their bank accounts, using deduction orders. The powers were discussed at some length in Committee, and I agreed then with hon. Members that it would be desirable to make the commission's options in this respect as wide as possible.
	The Bill as we debated it in Committee limited the powers to the use of periodic and lump sum deductions from personal current accounts, and to lump sum deductions from personal savings accounts. It therefore excluded deductions from business accounts, and from joint personal accounts. The amendments widen the primary provisions so that no type of account will be excluded on the face of the Bill. The details of accounts which will be excluded, if necessary, will be set out in regulations. That sends the right message to those thinking about trying to evade their responsibilities, and allows the powers to be exercised flexibly by the commission in the years ahead by making proposals to Ministers on the content of regulations. It also gives us the necessary flexibility to consult and co-operate with the financial services industry, to ensure that we take due account of its concerns about, for example, cost of administration, and to allow us to keep abreast of changes in the provision of financial services. Regulations under these powers will be subject to the affirmative procedure.
	The Bill has also been amended to allow the commission to apply for a freezing order in relation to property or assets held by a non-resident parent where it becomes apparent that he or she is about to dissipate those assets. We have also added an additional power to allow the commission to make an application to the court to set aside a disposition made by a non-resident parent where it was made with the intention of defeating a claim for child maintenance. These are powers that were supported and, in some cases, proposed by Opposition Members, and I am pleased that there is so much common ground between us on the need to provide the commission with the powers necessary to bear down on non-resident parents who are not meeting their obligations.
	Furthermore, following concerns raised about the recovery of historic debt, the Bill has been amended to ensure that all new and existing powers to collect child maintenance can be used on debt of any age. We have already amended regulations so that there is no longer a six-year time limitation for an application for a liability order on debt that accrued on or after 13 July 2000. However, there is some debt that had already reached six years of age before then and the amendment ensures that when the new administrative liability order comes into force, the same enforcement mechanisms can be used on all debt regardless of age.
	Finally, the Bill will be amended to provide for a court-based mechanism for the removal of travel authorisation—passports and, in due course, the equivalent provision in identity cards—from non-resident parents who wilfully neglect or culpably refuse to pay their child maintenance. It is an equivalent procedure to that which applies already for driving licences.
	As my colleague Lord McKenzie of Luton pointed out when the amendment was tabled on Report in the other place, we proposed it in response to legitimate questions from the Select Committee on the Constitution of that House concerning the importance to the individual of holding a passport and the fact that decisions to withhold such documents are usually made by judicial determination.
	The amendment means that the commission will have to apply to the court for an order to disqualify the non-resident parent from holding or obtaining travel authorisation, rather than being able to take the action administratively. However, I hope that we can all continue to reflect on which decisions need to be made by the courts and which could be made more effectively by administrative action. To that end, we reserve the right to come back to the House to reconsider which decisions should fall within the commission's remit. However, this arrangement is appropriate for this Bill.
	I hope that when we return to the matter, Opposition Members will approach it in the same spirit of consensus that we have seen with other tough enforcement measures, such as the powers to enter bank accounts that I described. The amendments are in many cases a welcome strengthening of the powers that we originally proposed for the commission, and many of them pick up suggestions from Opposition Members. I commend them to the House.

Andrew Selous: The third group of amendments that we find before us, which relate to deduction orders and preventing avoidance—the issue that was rightly raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker)—and travel restrictions, are all amendments with which those on the Conservative Front Bench find favour, not least because some of them are our very own.
	Amendments Nos. 7 to 23 are clearly sensible. They relate to the setting up of regular deduction orders. It is important to note that there is a right of appeal to the court should there be a problem with CMEC taking money from someone's account. If that is wrong or unreasonable in any regard, people have a right to go to court. It is important to mention that. The amendments are an additional useful part of the toolkit that we are giving CMEC. We welcome them because they are necessary.
	In particular, I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), who served with me on the Conservative Front Bench during our scrutiny of the Bill. In relation to clause 10, I think that it was my hon. Friend who spotted in Committee that current and deposit accounts needed to be specified on the face of the Bill to cover every type of bank account to ensure that those parents who owed maintenance did not set up accounts that were not touched by the regulations. It is good to see that specification.
	Amendments Nos. 24 to 49 relate to lump sum deduction orders. The Minister has already spoken a little about people paying by credit card and paying off arrears that they owe. The orders will be another means by which those arrears can be paid. The Conservatives continue to take the issue of debt very seriously. It weighs heavily on those parents to whom child maintenance is due. They feel that the money is owed to them, that they have been cheated of it and that their children have not had the benefit of it. We will certainly be vigilant in ensuring that the commission is fearsome in collecting that money, which is owed to many children up and down our country.
	Amendments Nos. 50 to 52, 96 and 98 are very important and deal with the precise point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne. They can both prevent and then set aside afterwards the disposal or transfer of assets in order to avoid legitimate child support maintenance payments. That is important. All too often, money is transferred into different accounts—perhaps into a new girlfriend's account—so that it cannot be touched, and someone then says, "Look at me. I'm penniless. I've got a couple of pounds in my bank account and no income." Such things happen. As the Minister said, people are pretty savvy and have worked out ways to avoid their obligations in the past. The important message that needs to go out is that the net is closing, as was suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who is another of my parliamentary neighbours.
	Lords amendments Nos. 53 to 82, 99, 102 and 122 will put the removal of passports or identity cards on to the same basis as the removal of driving licences and the imposition of curfews. The commission will be required to go the courts in the first case to take away someone's driving licence or to impose a curfew on them. It was therefore pretty surprising to me, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean and my noble Friend in another place, Lord Skelmersdale, that the Government intended to remove passports purely by administrative order and, moreover, not just by the commission's staff. Let us remember that, as we heard earlier, many of CMEC's functions could be contracted out, properly, to private businesses. So an individual, perhaps relatively lowly, employed by a private business somewhere could have the power to take away someone's passport.
	We understand the need to have the threat of taking away passports. Indeed, I was conscious of the fact that the Australian Child Support Agency was doing that some time ago, when the Select Committee on Work and Pensions visited Australia in the last Parliament to look at how its CSA seemed to work rather better than ours. I welcome that power—it is important—but I hope that it never has to be used. No one takes any joy in the fact that someone's passport or ID card is taken away, but the threat of doing so is important to bear down on those people who try to avoid their responsibilities.
	The Minister is right in that he and his parliamentary colleague the Minister in the Lords, Lord McKenzie of Luton, were rapped over the knuckles by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. The Committee's report states that the Minister in this place was trivialising the removal of passports. He said that the holding of a passport
	"relates to discretionary activity—the drive to go on holiday, for example".
	Many of us thought that that did not take into account the fact that we are a trading nation and have been for hundreds of years. Many people need to earn their living by going outside these shores to provide an income to their families and to the children of their former families. I am pleased that, after some persuasion by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, the Government changed their mind. However, I have a couple of questions about the removal of ID cards, which the Minister referred to earlier.
	The Government want to introduce identity cards. That is a source of political dispute among various hon. Members on both sides of the House. Assuming that identity cards are introduced at some point in the future—not a prospect that I personally welcome—I wonder whether the Minister will explain the position of someone whose identity card is removed. Will people perhaps be unable to gain access to benefits in any shape or form? Will they be unable to gain access to the health service in any shape or form if their identity cards are removed? If they are stopped by the police and the police have the right to inspect our identity cards, will they just get a white pass because their ID cards have been taken off them by CMEC? I hope that there are some fairly clear answers to those questions. If not, there will be considerable problems.
	I listened very happily to everything that the Minister said, until about the last three sentences of his remarks, when he rather alarmed me by saying that the Government reserve the right to return to the issue of removing passports by administrative order. That seems a bit strange.
	We have before us a hard fought for, much argued over amendment that we finally got right in the House of Lords, which says that a court should be approached when someone's passport is to be removed, but the Minister now says that that is all subject to review and that there may be a return to administrative orders at some unspecified point. That is a bit like the situation regarding the reviews that will be held on whether CMEC will continue to have Crown status. That worries me, because it seems a little different from the spirit of the agreement struck on the issue in another place by my noble Friend Lord Skelmersdale and Lord McKenzie of Luton. I seek reassurance from the Minister that the part of the Bill in question will not be changed by some regulation or other in future.

Paul Rowen: I, too, welcome this string of amendments. As the Minister knows, during proceedings on the Bill we raised a number of concerns about ensuring that collection and enforcement were as wide as possible. We gave examples of people who were transferring income and selling off assets without any collection taking place under the current CSA regime, so I welcome the fact that the amendments widen the scope of the bank deposits that can be dealt with. They will now include business deposits in cases where it is clear that money has been transferred from personal accounts into them to avoid payment—we have heard examples of such cases—and joint accounts, where there has been a hiding of income. The Bill will also allow lump sump payments and deduction orders to be paid. All that is to be welcomed.
	I particularly welcome the Minister's commitment that the six-year rule will no longer apply. Throughout proceedings on the Bill, we expressed concerns on the issue. When we come to the next string of amendments, we will consider debts and arrangements for dealing with historical debts. It is important that we send a clear message to people, particularly parents without care who may seek to avoid paying their dues. I am sure that, like me, the Minister has many constituents who have suffered under the current arrangements with non-collection and non-payment. I am grateful for the fact that the stringent regulations will be subject to regulation by the court, so if the parent without care feels that CMEC is being unreasonable, they can go to court to seek redress; that is an important safeguard. Notwithstanding that, the measures send a clear message that we will make sure that dues are paid, and that all accounts and assets will be considered when an assessment is made.
	With regard to travel arrangements, I welcome the fact that the Government accepted a point raised by my noble Friend Lord Oakeshott. It was wrong of the Government to think that they could put a travel restriction on someone by administrative order. The fact that that was admitted is to be welcomed; travel restrictions have to be dealt with by the proper authorities, with reference to the courts.
	In conclusion, I welcome the amendments. In due course, the orders that put the provisions into operation will be introduced. The Bill will be much better as a result of the amendments. What was in place before would have restricted CMEC's ability to go about its duty.

Oliver Heald: I support the idea that a passport can be taken away from someone who wilfully does not pay. There may often be a poetic justice in that. A number of cases have been brought to my attention in which the complaint has been that the absent parent was away overseas on holiday. Often, they had taken the children on holiday, although they were not paying for the absolute basics of life for them. The parent with care may be grinding away, trying to survive, while the other party flaunts their money by going on holiday. Taking away a passport is a strong incentive to perform for the parent who is supposed to be paying.
	I agree with the other sentiment that has been expressed—that that should not be done by administrative order, particularly in circumstances where the responsibilities can be outsourced to a company. It is a dangerous road to give a judicial function to a body that is nothing to do with the Government or the judicial system. I am glad that the Minister has thought again about that. He might want to reflect on other similar disposals—the football hooligan who is told that as a consequence of offending, he may not go abroad to watch England play and that his passport will be confiscated for the period when the match takes place, or the driver who has too many points on his licence or commits a road traffic offence and has his licence taken away. That is always done by a court.
	The Minister should give the House the assurance sought by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), that he will not review the provision and come back with the idea of an administrative order. The measure should stay in the judicial area and should be subject to the decision of a court.

Charles Walker: I realise that I am probably the Minister's worst nightmare—some sort of idle Back Bencher pottering in from one of the Commons Corridors and taking part in a debate on a Bill although he did not serve on the Committee—but I am interested in the matter.
	I welcome what the Minister said about pursuing people who have cash assets that lie outside income. I would be interested to know what will happen in instances where someone takes a cash asset and transfers it into a fixed asset—for example, they have £10,000 in cash in an account and buy a new car for £10,000, or they have a larger sum, say £150,000, and buy a house to hide it from the clutches of the CSA or the courts.
	Where such circumstances are identified, will there be powers to require such a person to borrow against that asset to pay the money that they owe, or to sell the asset so that the cash can be liberated and paid back to their partner? Alternatively, a notional income can be attached to those assets. If a person buys a house for £200,000, owns £150,000 of that and has a £50,000 mortgage, the income that can be derived from the £150,000 can be part of the calculation. I should be interested to know what the position would be in all those circumstances.
	On travel restrictions, I am always concerned when the state talks about taking away people's passports. It sounds a little like Big Brother. Conversely, I am attracted to the idea of stopping parents pleading poverty, as both the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) rightly identified. Some parents plead poverty, yet travel on a two-week vacation to Disneyland Florida. As my hon. Friend pointed out, one parent may be living almost entirely on benefits and bringing up the children day to day, while the former husband or partner is travelling north America at great expense. That does not seem fair.
	Finally, what are the logistics of the process? If the intention is to go after cash in bank accounts or cash in fixed assets, how will that be done smoothly, seamlessly and quickly, without loads of lawyers becoming involved and loads of appeals lodged? The process could take years. I have seen at my surgery people's absolute reluctance to face up to their responsibilities. I shall be interested to know how we will ensure that the process is speedy. With those concluding remarks, I can reassure the Minister that that will be my last contribution to the debate, as I have some constituents coming in this evening, whom I will be looking after later.

James Plaskitt: In that case, perhaps I had better begin by responding to the points raised by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) so that I can release him from these duties as quickly as possible. Let me begin by telling him that he is no nightmare; in fact, I would go so far as to say that those were dream questions, and I will give him the answers.
	There is already in place a significant array of powers that the existing agency can use to deal with assets that can be seized in certain circumstances. Indeed, if the non-payment and non-co-operation have gone so far that the agency has set bailiffs on, the assets can be taken in that way. Far from that process taking years, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, it can sometimes move quite swiftly. For example, a charging order can be placed on a property. Obviously, it will not be realised until that property is disposed of at some point, and that will take time, but in the end the money is collected. As he and his colleagues have said, this is about getting a message out there. Non-resident parents need to understand that whatever wheeze they come up with, it will not work, and that the agency—now to be the commission—has such an array of powers of seizure and sequestration that the assets cannot be hidden for ever. From now on, in addition to being able to go into bank accounts and take money out directly, make deductions from earnings and so on, we will have a suite of measures targeted at financial and physical assets, so that resources cannot be parked in those areas in order to escape the responsibility of paying child maintenance. The hon. Gentleman raised the right points—that is why I called them dream questions—and I hope that the answers will not cause him any loss of sleep.
	Let me turn to the points raised by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) about the withdrawal of passports. Everyone who has spoken in the debate has reiterated their support for this measure in principle. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) welcomed it for the reasons that he outlined—that it is galling for the parent with care to see a non-resident parent who is pleading poverty taking sometimes quite exotic overseas holidays. That rubs what is happening in the face of the parent with care. It is therefore appropriate that there should be a power to remove passports to cut out that option. Often, it is not the act of removing the passport that is necessary to do the trick, but the threat that that can happen: the mere knowledge that that might well happen if things get to a certain state is enough to make the non-resident parents cough up at some point. The test is not how often passports are withdrawn but the effectiveness of having the sanction in place.
	The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire asked how this might work in respect of identity cards, once they are in place. The way that it may work technically is that the identity card owned by the non-resident parent would have to be surrendered and replaced with an alternative card that did not have the travel authorisation element to it, but all the other functions for which it is necessary to have an ID card could continue to be carried out.
	Let me say to those who have raised concerns about this that many preliminary steps have to be gone through before it gets to the point where the travel documentation is removed. It will not be removed in some arbitrary way, as was implied in some of the comments that have been made—it is very much a final step after many preliminary actions have taken place. Those safeguards are already in place. The only reason we are saying that this might still be subject to review—the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire asked about this because he was concerned about the last few sentences of my speech—is that it is important to see whether continuing to go through the court-based route, as we have now accepted we will, imposes unacceptable delays in the administration of this sanction that might have the effect of devaluing it in some way. It is proper for us to be up-front and to say that if that happens—it has been suggested to us that it might be an issue—we would want to have the right to come back to this sanction, because it has to bite and be understood to have teeth. If the court proceedings route proves to get in the way of its effectiveness, it will be right to come back and reconsider the administrative route. Further primary legislation would be required, so there will be any amount of opportunity to revisit it. We have taken fully on board the points made by the Constitution Committee, but I am not going to say that it cannot be reconsidered at some point in the future.
	Apart from that, I have heard broad acceptance for and a welcoming of the amendments, which strengthen the Bill in a way that those who moved them intended. I am happy to take them into account, and I hope that they will be accepted by the House.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 8 to 85 agreed to.

Clause 30
	 — 
	Power to accept part payment of arrears in full and final satisfaction

Lords amendment: No. 86.

James Plaskitt: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 87 to 89.

James Plaskitt: This is a small group of amendments dealing with debt, which was debated in some detail in Committee in both Houses. We have again listened to those comments and concerns and therefore agreed to amend the Bill in two important areas. The first relates to the sale of debt—the factoring of debt to third parties to pursue it, as provided for in clause 34. We have amended the Bill to specify that regulations will include a requirement that the consent of the parent with care be sought before any such arrangement is entered into. Similarly, we have amended the provision in clause 32 for accepting part payment of arrears as full and final settlement to specify that regulations will again include a requirement that the consent of the parent with care be sought in advance, before that is done. The amendments clarify policy in terms of the Bill, and I commend them to the House.

Andrew Selous: Conservative Front Benchers support Lords amendments Nos. 86 to 89. I raised this issue in Committee on 11 October last year, when I moved amendment No. 21 to clause 29, which would have required the commission to obtain the permission of the parent with care in writing in order to reduce the liabilities owed to them. I am pleased that that is now in the Bill. It was a concern also widely shared by the Liberal Democrats and others.
	We are aware of the global figures of £3.7 billion of debt, of which it is generally agreed that about £1.5 billion is collectable. However, this must be gone through on a case-by-case basis. I brought a constituent to see the Minister—he kindly agreed to that—who was owed nearly £40,000 by the father of her two boys. That money was genuinely owed, and based on legitimate income that her former husband had been receiving. She is absolutely determined to get the money back because it will restore the years that the locusts have eaten. This issue goes deep into the heart of non-resident parents who care about this. They think that their children have been deprived of certain things in their childhood and want to make that up to them in later life, perhaps with a deposit on a house because they could not give them treats when they were younger. That is an entirely reasonable expectation. It is up to the parent to whom the money is owed to give their say-so if there is to be any reduction in that money. It is not a question of just tidying up CMEC's books to make it look it better so that it can give a better annual report to the Secretary of State, which then comes before Parliament, that says, "We've got the debt mountain down." We should not look at the matter from that point of view.
	This was another occasion when the Government got their fingers rapped by a House of Lords Committee—the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. In paragraph 152 on page 29 of its third report of the 2007-08 Session, the Committee said that the
	"principles of the sale of child maintenance...should be fully debated in Parliament when regulations are first laid under these powers."
	I am pleased to see that one of the Minister's colleagues in the other place referred to that report and agreed to amend the Bill accordingly. Again, that shows support for these important amendments. A vital principle is involved and we shall be pleased to see them included in the Bill.

Paul Rowen: We, too, welcome the amendments. The Minister will recall that in Committee a major concern of ours was that the creation of CMEC should not be used as an opportunity to forget about or write off large historic debts. I therefore welcome the effect of the amendments, which will give the parent with care the final say in whether the debt is written off, and ensure that they must agree to any selling on of that debt. However, I would like to question the Minister about how that will operate. He and I, having dealt with several constituency cases, can imagine circumstances in which there is a long-outstanding debt of a large sum of money, such as the one mentioned by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), the children involved have grown up, and a letter arrives from CMEC with an offer.
	Will the Minister tell me what safeguards will be put in place to ensure that the parent with care can seek advice, if they are concerned about the proposal? Will the full details of any settlement be explained to them? If they are owed £40,000, an offer of £20,000 may be acceptable, but will CMEC offer a full assessment of why that amount should be accepted? I would not want a situation to arise in which a letter drops through the letterbox asking for written permission without the possibility of further discussion, face-to-face consultation or further advice before such an offer is made.
	As we have said, we are talking about huge sums of money—more than £1.5 billion—and throughout their childhood an awful lot of children missed the opportunity to benefit from it. Will the Minister assure us that there will not be an automatic write-off or selling on of debt? There must be safeguards in place to ensure that the parent with care, and perhaps even the child, who may have reached adulthood, has a say and can have a proper discussion about what an agreement might mean to them. That is important if we are to take forward the provisions, which I welcome.

James Plaskitt: I am grateful to the hon. Members for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) for their support for the amendments. From our constituency casework, we know the prevalence of debt and the strength of feeling that there is about it. We know that some of the amounts involved are very large indeed, as with the constituent I met accompanied by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire.
	There is considerable emphasis in the operational improvement plan currently applied to the agency on improving its debt collection performance. I am pleased that the relevant measures being taken are having the intended result. The agency's target is to collect £200 million of debt a year—a sum that has never been achieved before—and it is on course to achieve that. The extra measures that we put in place have enabled it to perform more strongly in debt collection and the amendments will allow even more progress to be made. There is a certain stickiness in attempts to resolve the issue at the moment because of the current regulatory framework, which is why we have accepted the changes and put them into the Bill.
	To reassure the hon. Member for Rochdale, let me repeat that there is no general power of write-off. That would not be acceptable and it is not part of the Bill. It would be completely contrary to our message about the settling of such debts. Let me also try to reassure him that the parent with care is in control in this process; it would not be a case of a letter suddenly arriving saying, "This is what we think you should settle for. Sign here. "It will not happen like that. A deal would be under consideration only after lengthy discussion between the parties involved, and that would happen only if the parent with care agreed to it. That is the important consideration in this case. I hope that I have given the hon. Gentleman the reassurance he seeks.

Jennifer Willott: If the initial amount of debt in the name of the non-resident parent is recalculated at a much lower level because the original figure was unrealistic, will the Minister confirm that CMEC will provide some basic, plain English letters and information to the parents with care? A concern has been raised by parents with care that the information they received was difficult to understand. When something as difficult to cope with as a significant reduction in the amount of money that they are expecting arises, it is important that they get clear information.

James Plaskitt: The hon. Lady makes an interesting point about alterations in the level of debt. Historically, that has often happened because of the difficulties the agency has had in making the correct maintenance assessments in the first place, which led to wild variations in the assessment of debt in certain cases. That process needs to be stopped so that there is greater certainty about what is owed. The measures on current maintenance assessments and those that relate to the way the commission will operate are designed to put a stop to the volatility of debt assessments because the maintenance assessment will be correct from the start and will stay correct. We will no longer get such a wild oscillation, which the hon. Lady is right to say is distressing for parents with care who do not understand where they stand, and cannot make financial plans because they are not sure what the amount will be.
	The hon. Lady's second point about the need for correspondence from the agency and the commission to be absolutely clear is also well made. We have made that very clear to the commission, and the matter should be dealt with in that way. This area is difficult enough as it is without incomprehensible correspondence making it worse. That point is understood by the agency, which is reviewing the way letters are written, and that process will be carried forward into the work of the commission.
	We have had statements of support for the amendments, and I hope that they will now secure the support of the House.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 87 to 92 agreed to.

Clause 50
	 — 
	Appeal to appeal tribunal

Lords amendment: No. 93.

James Plaskitt: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments Nos. 94, 95, 100, 103, 104, 120, 121, and 123 to 125.

James Plaskitt: We come to the final group of amendments. They are minor and technical, and in most cases reflect the recommendations of the third report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords. The amendments change a number of the regulation-making powers from the negative to the affirmative procedure on the first point of use. The relevant powers are those relating to the monitoring of curfews and regulations prescribing the conditions of entitlement to a lump sum payment for mesothelioma.
	The group also contains a number of small drafting amendments to ensure consistency, including one to ensure that any reference to maintenance calculations under section 40A of the Child Support Act 1991, relating to an order for committal in Scotland, may be read as a reference to maintenance assessments, so that the provision will operate in relation to both old and new scheme cases.
	In commending these final, technical amendments to the House, I should like to extend my thanks to all who have worked on the passage of the Bill, including Opposition Members and those in another place who have ensured that it emerges improved as a result of the scrutiny that it has rightly enjoyed. The Bill contains important measures. It makes important reforms to the way child maintenance is administered and will help to lift many more children out of poverty, ensuring that more children receive the maintenance due to them and that more parents meet their financial responsibilities. The Bill also introduces a new scheme to pay a lump sum to sufferers of mesothelioma, providing financial support to anyone diagnosed with that dreadful disease.
	I should also like to thank those external stakeholders who have contributed to the development and improvement of the legislation, including One Parent Families/Gingerbread, Families Need Fathers, Resolution, the Law Society of Scotland and many others. I know that they will work with the commission and its staff to give the best possible start in life to this new and unique delivery organisation.

Andrew Selous: As the Minister said, we have now come to the final group of amendments. When I see a group of amendments headed "Minor and technical", I am always tempted to go through them carefully, just in case the Government are trying to sneak through something important. However, in this case the Minister has been straight with us, as he has been during the course of the Bill, and it has been a pleasure to work with him.
	The Minister again mentioned the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords—the second time it has been mentioned this afternoon. It is obviously a worthwhile Committee that carefully scrutinises what happens in this place and the other place. The Minister noted that there are three changes in this group of amendments to ensure that resolutions go through under the affirmative procedure, which I am sure will please my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who mentioned the issue at the start of our proceedings this afternoon.
	I am reassured that the four lobby groups, if I can call them that, that beat the main path to the Minister's door are the same ones that came to see me. One Parent Families/Gingerbread was understandably assiduous in its commentary on the Bill. Families Need Fathers is one of the sensible, mainstream fathers organisations—it is to be distinguished from some of the others, which are not—and I have benefited from my discussions with it.
	Resolution is particularly well informed on such issues, as the Minister said. He and I know that it would have liked him to go further on certain issues. Those are arguments for another day, but they will not go away. The Law Society of Scotland has its particular issues. There was an acknowledgment in the other place of the need to continue talking to Resolution and the Law Society of Scotland about the 12-month rule. The Minister has said that he wants good co-operation between the family courts and CMEC. They are in the same business and they want to achieve the same ends; we just have to ensure that they do not trip each other up, as it were.
	I should like to pay tribute, as the Minister did, to those who have worked with us on the Bill during its various stages, including my staff who have helped me greatly.

Paul Rowen: I, too, welcome the proposals contained in this string of amendments. The change from the negative to the affirmative resolution procedure is a recognition that this House and the other place have a positive role to play in amending regulations and orders. That issue was raised during our deliberations, and although it may have been because he had his knuckles rapped by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I am grateful that the Minister has nevertheless seen fit to make those changes.
	I welcome some of the provisions in the Bill. It focuses primarily on child maintenance and child poverty, as has much of our discussion, but it also deals with mesothelioma and other payments, which are relevant to my constituency. I also welcome the fact that the Government responded quickly to the concerns that hon. Members raised once the Law Lords had made their decision.
	The passage of the Bill and this string of amendments, dealing with the affirmative resolution procedure, are to be welcomed. I thank the Minister and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for the constructive way in which we have conducted this debate. That we have discussed a series of Lords amendments this afternoon that basically deal with the concerns we raised in Committee reflects the fact that we have gone through a useful process that has improved what I hope will be a cornerstone of legislation to tackle child poverty.
	Organisations such as One Parent Families/Gingerbread and Resolution are to be congratulated on the support that they have given us all, in providing amendments that have finally found favour with the Government today. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to a useful and important Bill.

James Plaskitt: I again thank the hon. Members for South-West Bedfordshire and for Rochdale for their support for the amendments in the group and for the Bill in general.
	As the hon. Member for Rochdale said, the Bill is a landmark piece of legislation, in terms of what we hope it will achieve on behalf of children, who have no part in the break-up of their parents' relationship but who can sadly suffer as a result. It is therefore necessary that appropriate arrangements be put in place to ensure that the obligations towards the children are met in way that, wherever possible, ensures co-operation with parents, but is firm with those who might otherwise feel that they have the option not to comply with their obligations. They do not.
	As hon. Members have said, the Bill has received thorough scrutiny. I feel that I am supposed to be displaying bruised knuckles as a result of some of the comments that have been made, but such comments are part of the ordinary scrutiny process that Bills go through. We have tried to take on board the comments made by those Committees that have been part of the process of deliberation on the Bill, as well as by other parties. The efforts that we have made during the passage of the Bill have, for the most part, been entirely constructive—we have done more of this work this afternoon—as a result of which we now have a better Bill.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 94 to 125 agreed to.

Energy from Renewable Resources

Malcolm Wicks: I beg to move,
	That this House takes note of European Union document No. 5421/08 and Addenda 1-2, draft Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable resources; notes the Government's support for the European Commission's proposal for increasing the renewable energy share of final EU energy consumption to 20 per cent, by 2020 as part of a balanced energy mix; further notes the importance of the Commission's parallel proposals in the EU package for strengthening of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, so as to provide the basis for a global carbon market and enable emission reductions to be made in the most cost-effective way; recognises the significant contribution that attainment of the renewable targets can make to the European Union's efforts to tackle climate change, enhance geo-political security of supply and provide the EU with the opportunity to capitalise on significant business and innovation benefits; further recognises the ambitious nature of the proposed legally binding targets; and urges that the Directive should be revised to provide Member States with sufficient flexibility as to ensure that the overall EU and Member State renewables targets can be achieved in a cost-effective way.
	Hon. Members will be aware of the clear context for this debate. We face two major energy policy challenges: tackling climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and ensuring our nation's energy security. In response to those challenges, Heads of Government at the 2007 spring European Council agreed ambitious targets to deliver a 20 per cent. reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, increasing to 30 per cent. when there is an international climate agreement. They also agreed to ensure that 20 per cent. of total EU energy will come from renewable energy sources by 2020. The European Council also endorsed measures to support carbon capture and storage and to improve the functioning of the EU emissions trading scheme, which is the centrepiece of the EU's carbon reduction policy.
	The climate and energy package that the Commission published in January seeks to give legislative effect to those goals, and represents a landmark package that underpins our global objective of securing a comprehensive international agreement to tackle climate change. It is an important signal of the EU's ambitions to shift to a low-carbon economy and to conclude successful climate negotiations at Poznan and Copenhagen. In line with the overall EU renewable energy target, the Commission has proposed individual, binding national targets on renewable energy, including a 10 per cent. minimum binding target for the use of renewables in transport, which is to be achieved by each member state. An overall 15 per cent. renewables target has been proposed for the UK, which compares with our current figure of less than 2 per cent.
	Renewable energy is already an integral part of the UK's energy strategy, and we are taking significant steps to drive up the level of renewable energy used domestically through a comprehensive raft of measures. The renewables obligation has been our primary instrument for incentivising renewable growth and has led to a near tripling of renewable electricity generation since its introduction in 2002. The planned reform of the renewables obligation alone will mean that generation will triple again by 2015. The reforms will provide increased flexibility so that different levels of support can be given to different technologies. That will allow more renewable generation from a wider range of technologies and will set us on a path to meet our more challenging 2020 target. Policies to address key constraints arising from planning and grid controls will also play an important role.

Michael Weir: The Minister mentioned the changes in the renewables obligation. I have already raised with him my concerns about experimental schemes such as those in the Moray and Pentland firths. I very much fear that the change in the ROC—renewables obligation certificates—banding will impact seriously on their ability to operate in future. Is he considering that possibility? Does he propose to make any changes to ROCs to address those concerns?

Malcolm Wicks: I want to be clear: is the hon. Gentleman talking about marine technologies—wave or tidal?

Michael Weir: Yes, I am. I have written to the Minister about this matter, and I have raised it with him before on the Floor of the House. The ROC banding is a matter of serious concern for wave technologies.

Malcolm Wicks: Wave and tidal marine technologies have enormous potential and the hon. Gentleman, as an expert on this matter, knows that they are relatively new technologies. A number of first-class British companies have developed such technology, but there has been relatively little deployment or testing of appliances in the sea for any length of time. We have given considerable backing to the research and development of those technologies, and we have made available a fund to help to finance the deployment of such projects. Meanwhile, our reform of the renewables obligation will give two ROCs, to use the jargon, to marine technologies. I am confident that the UK Government are offering substantial support to that technology.

Michael Weir: The point, which was raised during debates on the Energy Bill, is that although there are double-banded ROCs for those technologies, if they have previously received a grant from the UK Government, the EU or the Scottish Government, they have the choice of either repaying that grant or taking the double-banded ROC. The concern is that that will undermine their ability to develop.

Malcolm Wicks: Yes, they have a choice, and that must be a commercial decision. The Government are offering a significant amount of support through our research and development grants and the deployment fund, but I am always happy to talk those matters through with the hon. Gentleman, given his interest and expertise.
	At the end of last year, we launched a strategic environmental assessment on a plan for up to 25 GW of new offshore wind development rights in UK waters. The plan could increase the potential for offshore wind energy generation by 2020 from 8 GW to 33 GW, which is enough power for 25 million homes—the equivalent of all UK homes. In case anyone who is listening is confused, let me add that I do not suggest that such renewable power would be the only means of providing electricity to our homes, as we need balance in our energy supply system, but that is the equivalent figure. We have also launched a feasibility study into a possible tidal power generation scheme on the River Severn—a project with the potential to provide 5 per cent. of the total UK electricity need.
	We have recently introduced the renewable transport fuel obligation, requiring that an increasing proportion of our transport fuel should come from sustainable—that is the operative word—renewable sources. This year, we will overtake Denmark as the country with the highest operating offshore wind capacity in the world, and we are rated No. 1 as an investment location for offshore wind capacity by KPMG.

Robert Smith: In relation to transport fuels, the Minister rightly says that the operative word is "sustainable". How confident is he that rigorous assessment is made to ensure that that sustainability is being delivered?

Malcolm Wicks: I will say something on that a little later, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

Colin Challen: On my hon. Friend's point about the UK being a favourable investment location, what is his response to the story in the press at the beginning of last month that outlined that Mr. Sambhi, Centrica's director of power, thought that there was a great deal of uncertainty about the future of offshore investment in the UK? Is the Minister familiar with that company's views and what is his response to it?

Malcolm Wicks: I have not heard about that. I talk to Centrica executives and chief executives quite frequently, and I have not picked up that criticism. I shall study those comments, although I reject any such criticism because not only are we discussing today our commitment to meet our share of the 2020 target but we are in the process of reforming the renewables obligation through the Energy Bill. Also, as I have just said, an organisation such as KPMG rates us as the No. 1 investment location for offshore wind generation, so I do not accept that judgment from an employee of Centrica.
	The Government are fully committed to meeting their fair share of the overall target, but that is not to underestimate its ambitious and challenging nature. Achieving the UK target will require a step change increase in the proportion of our energy generated from renewable energy resources over the next 12 years—almost a tenfold increase. We will therefore consult over the summer on the most cost-effective way of meeting the UK's share, and will introduce a new renewable energy strategy next spring, after that consultation, that is consistent with our overall energy strategy, based on competitive markets.

Katy Clark: I strongly welcome much of what my hon. Friend says. It is clear that we are starting from a low base, as many European countries produce a great deal more renewable energy than we do. The lesson to be learned seems to be that feed-in tariffs have been very successful in many countries. Is my hon. Friend considering the application of such tariffs?

Malcolm Wicks: It is accurate to say that we are starting from a low base, but it is worth understanding the reasons for that. The fact that we have been blessed with huge amounts of oil and gas from the North sea and the UK continental shelf is one of the reasons why, historically, we did not invest in renewables. It is also fair to point out that, when we look at some of the nations that already produce a significant percentage of renewable energy, such as Germany, we see that much of that energy comes from hydro resources. As my hon. Friend knows, it is worth studying those comparisons. She also asked about feed-in tariffs. Our renewable energy strategy will be published soon, and we will say something about such tariffs in that.
	There is much to be said for consistency in macro-renewables. We hear a lot about microgeneration; in terms of macrogeneration, the renewables obligation is, in my judgment, a success story. Every year now, we are seeing momentum towards renewable energy. We would have to think long and hard before changing horses and adopting another mechanism. We could lose a couple of years if we did that, and we are faced with targets that are coming up quite soon—in 2020.

Paddy Tipping: rose—

Malcolm Wicks: Let me just finish this paragraph.
	However, I said during the Committee stage of the Energy Bill—I repeated the point on Report—that, on microgeneration based in our own dwellings and perhaps in community buildings, including schools and community halls, there might well be a case for our doing more. I will not rehearse all the things that we are doing, but I am proud of what we have done. We are the first Government to publish a microgeneration strategy, for example, but there might well be a case for doing more. We will be outlining options in the renewable energy strategy. As I hope hon. Members know, I am very committed to the development of renewables.

Paddy Tipping: I am grateful for the "however". May I reinforce the point that the renewables obligation has been a success, and that investment requires a sustainable, long-term framework? The renewables obligation and feed-in tariffs can work alongside each other. If there is an area of weakness in which the Government need to do more, it is around microgeneration.

Malcolm Wicks: That is an argument that I think I have accepted. Sometimes, the debate about feed-in tariffs needs disaggregating. Some people might argue for feed-in tariffs as an alternative, which would involve the scrapping of the renewables obligation. Many others, however, are essentially interested in how we can further incentivise microgeneration.

Steve Webb: The macro story in this directive is that the EU as a whole has to achieve a 20 per cent. goal. If Britain were an average-performing country with an average target, we would be going for 20 per cent., but we are not. We have been asked to achieve only 15 per cent., and we appear to be quibbling about that, as far as I can see. Will the Minister clarify whether we are being asked for only 15 per cent. because we have been so hopeless as a result of starting from so far behind, or is it because we do not have much renewable potential? How does all that sit with his assertion that we are No. 1 in Europe for renewables potential?

Malcolm Wicks: As I said, when KPMG was looking at the investment climate, it made a judgment that we were No. 1.
	In answer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Ms Clark), I was attempting to remind the House of the history of this matter. Looking at the different countries involved, we see that this has a lot to do with their natural resources. I have mentioned hydro, for example. It also has something to do with some countries not having our reserves of oil and gas. As I recall, the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) is something of an historian, and a fair-minded man. I would urge him to be fair-minded on this. Long before most of us were concerned about climate change, the oil and gas coming from the North sea from the 1970s onwards was surely a reason why, compared with some other European countries, we were not investing in renewables.

David Taylor: rose—

Malcolm Wicks: My very short speech is turning into something slightly longer, but I like to please my hon. Friends.

David Taylor: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. In my humble opinion, he is one of the most successful Energy Ministers that we have had. He has a couple of flaws, however: a regrettable affection for nuclear power, and a relaxed indifference to the impact of open-cast coal mining. Will he react to the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Ms Clark) about Germany? I am a member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and, as part of our inquiry into the citizen's contribution to climate change, we visited that country last year. There is a huge untapped well of potential support from citizens in this country, who need to be given sufficient encouragement. If a substantial feed-in tariff was at the root of what is happening in Germany, surely the Minister could be a little more positive about it here.

Malcolm Wicks: My hon. Friend is a great expert in this area, and he will know that the feed-in tariff system has been successful in Germany, but at some expense. At a time when energy affordability is the topic of the moment, along with the impact on our own constituents, I would ask him to look again at the considerable cost of the feed-in tariffs in Germany. I am now advised that they are propelling the German Government towards phasing down some of their financial support for that very expensive technology. Let us also remember that our objective is to bring on microgeneration, rather than to act as a fan club for one particular mechanism as opposed to another. We should all be open-minded about the best way of bringing on microgeneration.

Several hon. Members: rose —

Malcolm Wicks: I am not sure whether I can please everyone, but at least I can give everyone a fair hearing.

Joan Walley: In view of what the Minister has just said about Germany, and of what he said to me in a letter on this very issue in March, in advance of the Energy Bill going through Parliament, and of the EU report's finding that now,
	"as in 2005, well-adapted feed in tariff regimes are generally the most efficient and effective support schemes for promoting renewable electricity",
	will he share with us what work he has done on the competitive electricity market? That was one of the main reasons that he put forward earlier for not opting for feed-in tariffs.

Malcolm Wicks: That was quite a complicated question, and I want to ensure I have understood it fully. The point about competitive electricity markets and feed-in tariffs was the bit that puzzled me.

Joan Walley: In a letter to me on this subject, the Minister said:
	"However, it is not yet clear how feed-in tariffs would work with the UK's more competitive electricity market".
	In view of what he is now saying about domestic microgeneration, can we now make some progress on that issue? Will he tell me how he has dealt with the competitive electricity market and whether there is now a possibility of making real progress towards feed-in tariffs?

Malcolm Wicks: Clearly, the reason that I did not understand the words was that I had written them in a letter to my hon. Friend. Obviously, I did not have time to write a clearer letter, and I apologise to her for that. A lot will come out in the wash when we publish our renewable energy strategy, which will happen quite soon. If, after that, I need to clarify anything for my hon. Friend, I am sure that there will be an opportunity to do so.
	I shall now turn, at last, to the proposal itself. Because the cost-effective renewable potential of each member state was not taken into account in the setting of the targets, and because of the target's significant economic implications, it is imperative that member states are able to deliver their targets in a way that minimises the additional cost to consumers. I touched on this issue earlier when I said that affordability was very much the issue of the moment for many of our constituents.
	It is also important that the EU should demonstrate to the wider world that it can achieve ambitious targets in a way that reinforces rather than hinders the competitiveness of our industry. Cost-efficiency is therefore essential to the credibility of the targets. In practice, this means that member states must have sufficient flexibility in meeting their targets, suited to national circumstances. The Government therefore support the principle of renewables trading between member states and derogations for exceptionally large projects that are not complete by 2020. I could be thinking of the odd barrage here or there. We welcome the indicative nature of the interim targets.
	Biofuels were raised earlier. Sustainability is, of course—I wish to confirm this—our No. 1 priority. When the 10 per cent. target for use of renewables in transport was agreed at the 2007 spring European Council, at which it was acknowledged that the majority of the target would be met through use of biofuels, it was subject to two key conditions: it must be possible to meet the target sustainably and second-generation biofuels must become commercially available. Those conditions were reaffirmed in the 2008 spring Council conclusions and should be incorporated into the relevant articles of the renewable energy directive. Biofuel sustainability should also be required by the fuel quality directive.
	The Government are pressing for robust sustainability criteria to be included in the directive to ensure that the biofuels targets will not have negative impacts on, for example, greenhouse gas emissions. That is hardly the result that we would want. Alongside that, the Secretary of State for Transport commissioned the Gallagher review to assess latest evidence of the indirect effects of biofuels. The review is due to report in June and will inform our position on the EU discussions. We will not agree to a target until we are convinced that adequate safeguards are in place to ensure that it can be met sustainably.

David Heathcoat-Amory: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. This is obviously a controversial part of the directive because of the damage that could be done by biofuels to the environment and to food production. Is he happy that article 15 would explicitly prevent member states from having stricter sustainability rules than are provided for in the draft directive, which I think he is hinting are inadequate? They seem to me to be highly inadequate. Our existing domestic rules are stricter, so he would be switching strict national controls for laxer European ones by majority vote. That is obviously unsatisfactory. How does he see a way forward on that?

Malcolm Wicks: There is increasing concern not just in the UK but across the world and certainly across Europe about sustainability. I had hoped that what I have said would reassure the right hon. Gentleman that our voice in Europe will very much be on the side of sustainability. We are all concerned about the emerging evidence on producing biofuels instead of food crops. We are all aware that the rising price of some staple foods—rice, for example—is causing huge concern among the populations of many countries. I want to reassure him that we are pushing for sustainability. There will still be a significant role for biofuels and it is important that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater on that issue, but sustainability is the crucial word.

Gavin Strang: I know that my hon. Friend recognises the distinction between biodiesel from oil seed rape and bioethanol from wheat or whatever, but may I ask him for an undertaking that the Government really will drive hard to insert the objectives that he has been setting out—the principles of sustainability—in the common agricultural policy? That is fundamental to our future direction in Europe and in the UK.

Malcolm Wicks: Yes, I can give my right hon. Friend that assurance and I am grateful to him for raising that matter.
	The draft directive is being considered by the Energy Council and the European Parliament. The March European Council agreed that the package should be adopted before the European Parliament is dissolved for the 2009 elections to show EU commitment in the next round of international negotiations on a new climate change deal.

Peter Luff: I sense that the Minister is drawing to a conclusion and I have been waiting to hear something that he has not said so far. He is right to express scepticism—it is implicit in the motion—about our ability to meet the targets implied by what the EU is asking of us, particularly on electricity generation, but he has said nothing about renewable heat. Is not that one of the really big gains that we could make as a society?
	Microgeneration is important and feed-in tariffs are very interesting, but surely renewable heat is the big issue. How does it feed into the directive, if the Minister will excuse the pun, and has he anything to say on that important subject in the forthcoming statement on renewables?

Malcolm Wicks: Although I do not think it is relevant to the directive—I will take advice if I have that wrong—I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman, who is Chairman of the Select Committee on Business and Enterprise, that here in the UK we take the issue of heat very seriously. Looking back over more than one decade, if I may put it that way, one could accept that heat has been something of a weak link in energy policy. Despite some history in this country of interest in district heating and combined heat and power, we should acknowledge that.
	The Office of Climate Change, which was established only a year or so back, looked at the issue of heat for one of its first projects—not just renewable heat and, for example, heat pumps, but the more general issue of how we can use the heat from power stations, for instance. The renewables side will be a feature of our renewable energy strategy.
	In drawing my remarks to a conclusion, which I was about to do before the Chairman of the Select Committee intervened, may I say that we are absolutely committed to our share of the EU target? For different reasons, which most Members of the House—I cannot speak for all—would understand, different member states starting from different bases will have different targets. Our target will be 15 per cent. or thereabouts. It is a tremendous challenge, but one that the Government are committed to meeting.

Charles Hendry: First, I thank the Minister for arranging for the motion to be debated on the Floor of the House. That is an important contribution. This is a significant issue that many hon. Members will be keen to speak on.
	The motion before us is really two motions. It begins with the normal, rather platitudinous statements that we have come to expect of such motions, saying how marvellous they are, but the key part is the last few lines, which contain the words
	"urges that the Directive should be revised to provide Member States with sufficient flexibility as to ensure that the overall EU and Member State renewables targets can be achieved in a cost-effective way."
	We have had a couple of sentences from the Minister about flexibility, but not much about cost-effectiveness. I hope he returns to that issue.
	There can be no doubt that the directive and the targets that it contains represent a significant challenge. In 1997, the EU set out the target that 12 per cent. of energy should come from renewables by 2010. It looks increasingly unlikely that that target will be met. The Minister is no stranger to the shortcomings of targets. The Government have had their own target that 10 per cent. of our electricity should come from renewables by 2010. Now they are saying that it may be only 8 per cent.
	When it was clear that that target would not be met, it morphed into 20 per cent. from renewables by 2020. However, the Government's latest answer to a parliamentary question suggested that the figure could be as low as 12 per cent. There is clearly an enormous amount of work to be done if we are to have the step change that the directive would require.
	The EU targets are not just for electricity; they are for energy overall. That represents a massive challenge. We will be required to bring 10 times more renewable energy on stream in the next 12 years as compared with the past 12. That is just for electricity. It involves nearly seven times as much energy from renewable sources as has been achieved already.
	It has been calculated by those outside the House that a 15 per cent. energy requirement for Britain translates to 40 per cent. of our electricity having to come from renewables. How do we get there? That is one of the big challenges that we need to address. Peak usage in the UK is about 62 GW, and 40 per cent. of that coming from renewables would involve producing about 25 GW of renewable electricity by 2020. Most of that would have to come from wind power, because the other technologies simply are not yet in a position to deliver an amount of such magnitude. With a typical load factor of 35 per cent. for wind, we might be looking at 70 GW of installed wind capacity by 2020 to achieve that. That is a massive target, and nothing indicates that we are remotely on course to achieve it.
	I recognise the investment that has been made in energy in the past and the huge contribution that it represents, but we are talking of an investment in offshore wind of a similar magnitude to the investment in oil in the North sea over recent decades. Doing for offshore wind what has been done for oil presents a big challenge. I also recognise the massive contributions that British companies are making. I know that the Minister visited the subsea exhibition here earlier today, but I do not know whether he saw, as I did, products being developed by First Subsea, which are making a huge difference to the ease with which massive structures can be attached to the sea bed.
	British companies are leading the world, but the challenge is formidable, and we need to know how the Minister thinks it will be met. What contributions does he think will be made by different technologies over the time in question, not in percentage terms but in terms of output? If the technology does not come from wind, where might it come from? Marine technology will make a massive contribution in years to come, but we cannot realistically expect it to do so by 2020. According to reports published this week, the cost of solar energy has fallen significantly, but we shall not be able to make the most of that unless we have financial systems to stimulate the technology and make its use possible.
	I was encouraged by the Minister's observation that there might be a case for doing more about feed-in tariffs, and I hope he will do more when the Energy Bill is debated in Committee in another place. Amendments will be tabled that will enable us to drive forward the agenda, and if no amendment on feed-in tariffs is tabled, both sides of the House will feel that a major opportunity has been missed. We also need to do more about microgeneration: it has huge potential, but without a system of funding through feed-in tariffs nothing will happen.
	The Minister mentioned the Severn barrage. It is unlikely that it could be built by 2020. It has the advantage that, unlike most other forms of renewable energy, the power that it generates would be predictable, but it would probably not be much cheaper than wind. It would require a funding system all of its own, and it is not yet evident how that could be arranged. It would also raise huge environmental concerns. Some of those who have been involved in the technology believe that lagoons might be a better solution, and they might indeed be better for the environment, but they would undoubtedly be more expensive than the barrage. A couple of weeks ago, I visited La Rance in Brittany to see the largest working barrage in the world, built by the French 40 years ago. It is an incredibly impressive structure, which shows what could be done here but also highlights some of the challenges involved, including environmental challenges.
	The problem is that the Government have signed up to a project without knowing how they will deliver it. Perhaps officials in the Department of Trade and Industry, as it was then, thought that the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would go to Brussels and sign up to a commitment for 20 per cent. of our electricity rather than for 20 per cent. of our energy. Their reaction was one of complete horror. Perhaps that poisoned challice was Tony Blair's parting gift to his successor.
	We need to know rather more about the cost. In the explanatory memorandum, the Minister says that his initial estimate of the direct cost to the United Kingdom of the 15 per cent. target is at least £5 billion a year, plus indirect costs in higher energy prices. What does he mean by "direct cost"? Does he mean the cost of what he has described as the enormous investment in renewable technology and its infrastructure? Can he confirm that although it may include the cost of connecting renewable electricity facilities to the national grid, according to a study by Pöyry Energy Consulting, which his Department commissioned, it does not include the cost of the investment in infrastructure required to meet the target more generally?
	Does the direct cost include the so-called resource cost—the extra cost to the economy of using more expensive sources of energy than could otherwise be used? Can the Minister confirm that the study by Pöyry Energy Consulting suggests that the resource cost will be at least €5.1 billion a year up to 2020, or, in current prices, about £4 billion? Pöyry also says that if an effective market does not develop for the trading of renewable energy and the United Kingdom has to provide for all its own renewable energy needs, that resource cost will rise to €6.7 billion, or £5.3 billion, a year. It says that the lifetime cost to the United Kingdom of meeting the target could be as high as €93 billion. Those are huge figures. In his motion, the Minister talks of cost-effective ways of delivering his proposals. What has he in mind?
	At a time when consumers are profoundly worried about rising costs, what will be the cost to them? How will the Minister carry people with him? At present, if people were asked whether their priority was secure energy, green energy or cheaper energy, they would probably say that they wanted the cheapest possible energy. The age of cheap energy has gone, but in terms of what will be relatively achievable in the future, cost is clearly a particularly important aspect. Has the Minister had discussions with the CBI, the Institute of Directors and other business groups about the impact of these costs on the economic competitiveness of the United Kingdom? We all agree that this is the direction in which we should move, but surely we should do so with our eyes open and be aware of the costs involved.

Paddy Tipping: I am interested in the points that the hon. Gentleman is making, and I agree with many of them. He has stressed the key issue of affordability. Is he saying that his party accepts that energy prices will continue to rise?

Charles Hendry: We have all seen what happened to the predictions of the DTI and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform about energy prices. There is a massive difference between those predictions and where the prices have ended up. Certainly for the foreseeable future, by which I mean the year ahead, it is hard to see how energy prices could do other than rise. It is likely that in the first quarter of next year gas prices will be 50 per cent. higher than they are now. The forward market in energy across the board is very high. We also know that for every 1 per cent. of economic growth, energy demand goes up by 1.5 per cent. Given that the Chinese and Indian economies are still growing at a rate of at least 4, 5 or 6 per cent., the energy supply will be very tight, and will continue to be expensive for the foreseeable future.
	As the Minister will know, the directive is covered by article 175(1) of the treaty establishing the European Community. Can he confirm that such measures are covered by qualified majority voting, meaning that the British Government would have no veto over the proposals? Would it not be more appropriate for the directive to be covered by article 175(2), which relates to environmental laws that significantly affect
	"a Member State's choice between different energy sources and the general structure of its energy supply",
	and under which there would be no QMV? The Government would then be able to use its veto.

David Heathcoat-Amory: My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. He has already cited the unrealism of the targets, and the huge potential cost to our constituents. Does he think it wise for us to accept or negotiate a directive under majority voting that would render it beyond the democratic control of the House, and therefore our constituents, after the next election? Will he press very hard for a good answer to the question that he has just raised? There was an alternative—namely to found the measure on a different legal base subject to unanimity. Is that the policy that he would advocate?

Charles Hendry: I think there is a very strong case for unanimity to apply. That returns us to what the Minister said about biofuels. He said that unless the directive was adapted to take account of the Government's concerns about biofuels, they would reject it. However, under QMV, they would not be able to reject it There is a strong case for something of such fundamental long-term importance to be endorsed by all member states individually.
	It is still far from clear what will count towards the renewable energy target. The Minister said that there should be trading, about which Baroness Vadera has spoken elsewhere. It is interesting to note that that is Government policy. Does the Minister envisage a limit to how much can be traded, or will he argue that no limit should be imposed on the grounds that a limit would restrict fair and free trade?
	The Minister said that the major projects that would not be completed by 2020 should be included, citing the Severn barrage. How far advanced would projects have to be in order to be included? What if a project were due to be completed in 2022 or 2025? What cut-off date has he in mind?

Peter Luff: Has my hon. Friend yet met any independent expert who thinks that these targets are achievable? If they are not, a very worrying loss of confidence could be created in our whole environmental agenda.

Charles Hendry: There are certainly people who have a vested interest in the types of technology that would be used and who say that the targets are achievable, but even they would say that the targets are very challenging. All the independent experts are saying that "very challenging" is an optimistic phrase. I find it difficult to see how we get from where we are today to where we need to be by 2020 when I look at the huge investment that will be required.
	Baroness Vadera has also suggested that nuclear power and coal-fired power stations equipped with carbon sequestration and storage should be included. What is the Government's position? Do they now consider both nuclear and carbon capture and storage to be renewable technologies—a difficult assumption to come to—or are they negotiating to have the definition of the directive broadened to be "low carbon" rather than "renewable"? I could see why other countries such as France or Poland would wish to encourage that, but we need to see what the Minister has in mind to try to take this forward.
	The directive talks about the additional financial support that will be required for renewables and the Minister refers to this in the explanatory memorandum. Has he been able to establish what level of support will be required, how it would be delivered and whether he is completely satisfied that it can be given under EU rules on state aid? The directive would also require member states to give electricity from renewable sources priority access to the national grid. There is great merit in that idea if we want renewables to come forward, but can he confirm that he has made the nuclear companies aware of this? New build nuclear would require massive investment in the national grid, in part because the volume of electricity it will be generating would be so much greater than from existing power stations. Has he spoken to the nuclear industry to make it aware that its national grid needs would come behind those of renewable electricity facilities? What are the implications of that for a new fleet of nuclear power stations?

Steve Webb: Is the hon. Gentleman advocating that renewables should have a prior claim over nuclear in terms of access to the grid?

Charles Hendry: I accept that there is a need to look at the way in which the national grid operates. It does not make sense at the moment, where people are connected directly in the order in which they have applied. For example, a wind farm that does not have planning consent and will not get it for years will be connected before one that already has planning consent. That does not make sense. I believe strongly that there is a role in the debate for nuclear, but if we end up with a system in which investment in nuclear is put at risk because of that priority, that will need to be addressed. I do not think it is as straightforward as one or the other.

Alan Whitehead: Does the hon. Gentleman note that article 14 of the draft directive states that member states should give priority connection to renewables? Does he support that part of the directive, disregarding its consequences, or is his support conditional and rather lukewarm?

Charles Hendry: My support is conditional. If we ended up with new investment in nuclear being put at risk by that one clause, that would give me profound concern. We have to look at the matter and I would be interested in the views of the nuclear industry. The future energy provision for this country is so finely balanced that to start putting in place artificial barriers would be counter-productive.
	The Minister spoke at length about biofuels and the requirement that all member states get 10 per cent. of their transport energy from biofuels by 2020. I have referred to the fact that it would be better if this were done under a system of unanimity rather than by qualified majority voting. Clearly, attitudes to biofuels have been changing; perhaps we were overly positive a year ago and are now overly pessimistic, as we do not take sufficient account of the potential of second generation biofuels and cellulosic biofuels, allowing crops to be used for food and the remainder for fuel.
	The directive rightly puts down many restrictions, but we need to know with clarity where the lines in the sand will be with regard to biofuels being included. This debate is bound to continue, especially in the light of the publication of a report by the scientific committee of the European Environment Agency which estimated that the amount of land required to meet the directive's 10 per cent. target is greater than the total volume of land available that could be used for bioenergy production without harming the environment of the EU. The scientific committee has gone further and called for the suspension of that 10 per cent. biofuels target. In the light of these concerns, does the Minister agree that there is a case for dealing with biofuels separately from this directive, so we can do so from a position of greater understanding about the full impact of their development?
	Can the Minister tell us about the inclusion of biomass? At 350 MW, the Port Talbot renewable energy plant will be one of the largest in Europe. Although it is not renewable on a day-to-day basis, because the wood that it burns releases carbon, it produces renewable energy over the lifetime of the project, as the trees planted to replace those cut down for burning will absorb the carbon dioxide that the plant produces. Would such plants count towards our EU 2020 targets?
	A lot of questions need to be answered. We are at times critical of the Government's decision to hold another consultation because they simply do not know which way to turn. But there is a strong case for further consultation on this exercise and it is crucial that industry and other interest groups take part in the programme. I hope that the Minister will make sure that there is a real understanding of the urgency. He talked about a renewable energy strategy being produced next spring. To many of us that is leaving it rather late. We need to push the programme as far forward as quickly as we can. What we do not have is time on our side. Every month of delay makes these targets even more challenging to reach. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us reassurance on these points of concern.

Michael Connarty: I thank the Minister, if he was involved in the decision to debate this subject on the Floor of the House. I certainly thank the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) for what was clearly a speech based on having read the directive and the report of the European Scrutiny Committee report of 27 February 2008. The Committee was so concerned about the issues contained in the directive and the dilemmas facing the Government that we thought it should be debated here.
	There has been some diversion from the task before us, which is to look at the draft directive. The Minister has got it right in the motion, which states that the draft directive
	"should be revised to provide Member States with sufficient flexibility as to ensure the overall EU and Member State renewables targets can be achieved in a cost-effective way."
	Little has been said about the cost. The Minister's assessment to our Committee was that we would need an investment of £5 billion per annum between now and 2020 to reach the target of 15 per cent. The reality, as the hon. Member for Wealden said, was that we have fallen far short of our previous aspirations; they were aspirations and have not really been targets. The problem with the directive is that it gives the power to the Commission not just to set a target for 2020, but to review it every two years and to take action against states that do not reach their two-year targets.
	Every country is expected to deliver a flowchart as well as a commitment to mandatory targets by 2020. The flowchart will be assessed every two years and the Commission can then use its powers. If it goes through by QMV, those powers can be punitive. The Commission can use the European Court of Justice to force countries to do what the Commission has decided they should do. Flexibility is desperately needed in relation to the directive because I do not believe that it is necessarily well founded.
	Having viewed the EU for the past 10 years as a member of the Scrutiny Committee and as Chairman for the last couple of years, it is clear to me that Euro-fudges are driven by political alliances, often in the major states within Europe. It is clear that the alliance between the SPD and, it hopes, the Greens to get back into power in Germany has affected all energy policy in the past four or five years. The Green agenda—an anti-nuclear and pro-renewable agenda— is not necessarily based on what it should be based on: a carbon count. It should not be based on the form of generation, which should be sustainable and help security of supply, but on the basis of the carbon count of that type of energy. Yes, renewables might be shown to be a low-carbon form, but they are a very expensive low-carbon form and we have yet to deal with the major problems associated with it.
	My hon. Friend the Minister referred to microgeneration. The point has been made that if grid access is challenged for a major base-load because of the problems associated with trying to get lots of microgeneration or small generation from wind farms, is that the right choice to make for the country and in sustainability terms? I believe that there was a motion before the European Parliament recently through which it rejected the biofuels proposal because of its effect on the sustainability of food production. I heard that a representative of the Commission's directorate-general said that there will be enough spare land when the common agricultural policy is properly reformed to allow Europe to generate as much biofuel as is required to meet its targets. I do not know whether that is likely to be more than a wish on its part.
	On why we are at such a low base, we should consider paragraph 1.9 of our 15th report. On targets—this is the UK's own assessment—it said that we are
	"at less than 2 per cent...and only expected to rise to 5 per cent. by 2020."
	This directive is asking for a massive increase in commitment to renewables, and it is not one that the UK can sustain, for a number of reasons that I have outlined. We are all dealing with one of those reasons at the moment: our constituents are fed up to the back teeth with the increase in fuel prices. Using biofuels will add to the cost of car fuel and to domestic fuel prices. We and the Government must take that into account—every Government in Europe has to take that into account, given the new range of costs of commodities such as oil and gas.
	There is much to fight for in the directive, much that is good in it. However, on the question of unanimity versus qualified majority voting, raised by the hon. Gentleman, if I recall correctly, the Government's opinion was that article 175(2) should be used in respect of renewable fuels, so unanimity would be required. That has been resisted by the Commission. The Government's first task is to go back and argue the case. Our report points out that, following the 2007 spring European Council that approved the general outline of the White Paper and introduced the draft directive,
	"the Commission made a political commitment to all Member States that it would attempt to agree the national targets by unanimity."
	The first thing that the Government must do is to ensure that these targets are agreed by unanimity. That means every country on that rather odd table appended to our report, which demands that we increase from 1.5 to 15 per cent., but which also demands that a country such as Sweden, which has a very good record, increases from 39.8 to 49 per cent. It might be more difficult for Sweden to achieve that than for us to achieve an increase from 1.5 to 15 per cent. It is as if the figures have been worked out on the back of the proverbial fag packet—on the basis of some rule of thumb made by a Commission directorate-general official. Unanimity is required first, and with unanimity comes the ability of our Government properly to negotiate and to get the flexibility that they are calling for in the motion, which I will support.

Steve Webb: Like other hon. Members, I welcome the profile given to this important subject by it being debated on the Floor of the House. The frustration, of course, is that we get 90 minutes, whereas if we were debating it upstairs in Committee, we would get another hour on top. Given the detailed nature of many of the issues that we want to raise, it is frustrating that so few of us will be able to contribute in any detail.
	It is important to say a word or two about the context. The point of the directive is presumably to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from energy, heat and transport, yet we are debating this issue on a day when the Office for National Statistics has published greenhouse gas emission statistics for the country showing that in the past eight years, our emissions have barely changed. On hearing the Minister talk about all the triumphs of British policy—on hearing how we are No. 1 at this and that and how we will hit these very bold targets—one would not realise that in the past eight years, we have made no progress at all in reducing our emissions. It is indicative of the lack of drive and determination that we have seen to date that we are starting now from where we are.
	It is extraordinary for the Minister to say that the reason we are worst in Europe on renewables except for Malta and Luxembourg is that we have had all this oil, and so we were just going to use it and not bother too much about renewables. The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who signed last year's agreement on these renewables targets, is the same Prime Minister who 10 years earlier signed the Kyoto treaty. The Government were only a few months into power when they signed up to the Kyoto targets, yet 10 years later, we are still virtually bottom in Europe on renewables. Is the fact that we had oil somehow an excuse for our lamentable failure? That is what the Minister seemed to be implying—that we were not under any pressure because we had some alternatives, so we did not bother much with renewables. That is a shocking thing for a Minister for Energy to say.
	I have to say that I do not hold this Minister personally responsible. He was not the one trying to solve the energy crisis—he was solving the pensions crisis at the time. We absolve him of having failed to solve the energy crisis because he was dealing with other big problems that have now been resolved.

Malcolm Wicks: The hon. Gentleman has provoked me. He is absolutely right: together with friends, we tackled the pension issue—with a little bit of scrutiny from him from time to time. However, the serious point is that I was going for a broader historical sweep, saying that in the 1970s—I was not talking about the past 10 years—we suddenly discovered this huge resource of oil and gas in our own backyard in the North sea, whereas other countries had to look at alternatives because they did not have that resource.

Steve Webb: I am slightly baffled by this. The argument for why, in 2005, on these figures, we were the worst in Europe seems to be that in the 1970s we found lots of oil. We signed up to climate change obligations in 1997, at the start of this Government's term of office, and for the best part of 10 years on we were bottom of the league. Even if we achieve the goals in this directive, we will still be 18th in Europe. Even if we achieve the targets that everyone is saying are bold and very demanding, we will "surge" to 18th in Europe. Is that not an indication of the paucity of the Government's achievements so far?
	On the one hand, we are trying to cut our carbon emissions through the renewable strategy in the directive; on the other, we are seeing airport expansion and new coal-fired power plants. There is a lack of connectedness in this whole policy, which, again, is segmented into different Departments, none of which has overarching responsibility for the environment. The root cause of the failure of the Government's climate change policy is that no one in the Government with a very big stick is in charge of it. Whenever I do talks on climate change and the environment, I always ask audiences to name the Environment Secretary, and virtually none of them can. I mean no disrespect to the Environment Secretary; rather, that is indicative of the status of the environment within the Government. All the big decisions on the environment—be they on energy, airports, transport, housing insulation, green taxes—are all taken by somebody else. That is the biggest problem.
	On the 15 per cent. target for the UK, the Minister said that we would do our fair share, but of course, we are not. We are doing below our fair share because we failed so much in the past and we start from so far behind. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) suggested that these numbers are made up on the back of a fag packet. The directive indicates that one of the bases for the numbers we have signed up to is where we started from, which is a position of great weakness due to the failure of Government policy to date. One of the reasons our percentage is so low is that we have such a long way to go. It was extraordinary to hear the Minister say in his introduction that Britain is rated No. 1 by KPMG for offshore wind potential. That implies that we should have a really big target, because we have fantastic renewable potential. Actually, we have a below-average target because even with tremendous offshore wind and tidal power potential, we still cannot credibly get to more than 15 per cent., given how we have done. So the 15 per cent. figure—the fact that we cannot do any better than this—should be a source of national embarrassment, and even that looks pretty difficult to attain.
	One issue is not clear to me. The Minister talked about 15 per cent. and then said, "or thereabouts". In responding to the debate, perhaps he can clarify whether the British Government are going to attempt to water down that target. The motion refers to "flexibility" on achieving that, and in the evidence that he has given on this directive, he talked about flexibility on the trajectory. He will know the directive contains a trajectory—an indicative trajectory—in annex 1B, which suggests that a quarter of the progress must be made by 2011-12 and that 65 per cent. of the progress must be made by 2017-18. I find that alarming, because it means that two years short of the deadline we will need to have made only two thirds of the progress. I hope that the Minister will correct me if my understanding is wrong.
	I understand the point that there is a lag in these things and that they take time to come on stream, but that is an incredibly end-loaded approach. I think that the Minister's position is that he wants even more end-loading. Let us reflect on what the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk just said. He seemed to say that we do not want penalties for really slow progress in the early years, because we will have this great surge in the end. My worry is that the British Government will say, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow", but tomorrow may never come. Unlike the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, I think that the threat of imposing serious penalties on the British Government so that we can make steady progress as we go is a very good thing. It is entirely welcome because we know what the British Government would do without someone taking a big stick to them.
	The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has responded to the directive, producing a written ministerial statement on 23 January. It was totally delusional. It is baffling to realise which country is being referred to when the Department describes the situation. I have not got time to go through it all in depth, but paragraph 13 states that we
	"are aggressively implementing our micro-generation strategy."
	Which microgeneration strategy are the Government aggressively implementing? I have not noticed it. They are opposing the only microgeneration strategy in town—feed-in tariffs—for now, because they are going to consult on it in the summer. They will probably eventually give in on that. Where is the aggressive prosecution of the strategy?
	The whole document is full of delusion about the position that we have reached. Paragraph 14 states that
	"we will need to do even more."
	It then discusses heat, a crucial subject about which we have had a brief discussion. There was nothing on renewable heat in the Energy Bill. Why? Guess what? It was because we will need to do even more. We will need to incentivise renewable heat, which is why we are told that
	"we will shortly be issuing a call for evidence".
	When are the Government going to get on with it? A legislative opportunity is going through the House at the moment that would allow any necessary legislative steps to be taken on renewable heat, yet there is to be a call for papers and perhaps a conference. Perhaps I could attend that, to listen and debate. Perhaps there could be a further consultation draft.

Malcolm Wicks: I shall tell the hon. Gentleman where he can help me. When I receive representations from Liberal Democrat MPs and Liberal councils trying to block the development of renewable projects, as frequently happens, will he come with me to those meetings to urge his colleagues to walk the walk, rather than just talk the talk?

Steve Webb: I would be interested to receive specific examples. I was talking about the topic of renewable heat, and I am not aware of any Liberal Democrat council in the country that is —[Interruption.] The Minister has swapped to wind farms; I am talking about heat and his answer is wind farms. Will he deal with the specific point I am making about the failure to address renewable heat? We are also failing on renewable transport, and the renewable energy policy is already years behind schedule—that is a pretty poor combination.
	We could do with answers on a couple of other specific issues. I would be interested to learn what projections the Minister has made of the contribution of renewables and the contribution of Scotland to his overall totals. To what extent does his Department examine particular sites, areas or nations in the United Kingdom? To what extent will the Government in Scotland's attitude to, for example, onshore wind, be a barrier to the Government achieving the targets in this directive? Has he examined that matter?
	We have heard about priority grid access, which is mentioned in the directive.

Michael Weir: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Steve Webb: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not. He has intervened on a number of occasions, and I want to give him a chance to speak.
	The issue of priority grid access came up during our debates in the Energy Public Bill Committee but nothing happened, as far as I can tell. The directive refers to it, implying that there would be priority grid access, but it is not clear to me whether or not there is, or what the Government's position is.
	My hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) referred to the renewable transport fuel obligation, and the Minister said something rather strange. He said that we must not have a target unless we are sure about sustainability. I thought we already had a target and that it had come in a couple of months ago. I thought that we now had a 5 per cent. obligation on biofuels, yet in only a couple of months' time the Government's review will assess the sustainability issue. Are we obliging transport operators to use a percentage of renewable fuels without having robust certification in place now? In other words, are we doing damage now by introducing an obligation when we are not yet satisfied that we have reliable certification? That is my understanding of where we are at, and that concerns me a great deal.
	It would have been a great joy to have gone through the entire ministerial written statement pointing out the absurdities and the complacency, yet it would also have been a great sadness, because these are important issues. We want these goals to be achieved, because we think that they are a legitimate priority for this Government. That is why we will support this directive tonight, but we urge the Government not, as is hinted at in the motion, to try to water it down in the negotiations. We urge them not to try to have opt-outs, get-outs and British exemptions. Would it not be great if, for once, Britain was leading the way, rather than having to plead for special terms because we have failed so much in the past?

Katy Clark: I strongly welcome the fact that we are getting the opportunity to debate this draft directive on the Floor of the House because, as has already been made clear, achieving the targets will have substantial implications for many areas of policy. I welcome our focusing clearly on the document before us, which highlights the fact that previous attempts to meet renewables targets have not been very successful. In 1997, a directive setting a non-mandatory target of 12 per cent. by 2010 was not successful, and, as has been said by many hon. Gentlemen, it will be very difficult for us to meet the targets being set by the European Union.
	Although it will be very difficult to meet, it is very important that we sign up to a mandatory target on renewables of 15 per cent. As has been said, we are starting at a very low base. There are many reasons for that, but part of the cause is that we have not taken earlier challenges as seriously as we should have done. We need to accelerate our approach in many areas of policy if we are to meet the targets being set by the directive.
	The debate on these issues often focuses strongly on electricity, which is, of course, an extremely important factor. However, it is only one of the areas that we need to examine, and it is clear that if we are to meet the directive's targets, the renewables sector will have to be substantially developed. I welcome what the Government have done on renewables obligation certificates—ROCs—particularly the provisions of the Energy Bill. They introduce enhanced ROCs in relation to other forms of renewable energy.
	We need to go further than that and we need to examine what has worked elsewhere in Europe, so I urge the Government to re-examine the issue of feed-in tariffs, particularly in relation to micro-generation. However, I am not of the view that we should move away from ROCs, because they have been exceptionally successful in encouraging the private sector to invest in research and development and in the expansion of renewables that we so desperately need.
	The table provided to us from the European Scrutiny's 15th report of Session 2007-08 highlights the situation in which we find ourselves; the UK is starting from a very low base. Only 1.3 per cent of our share of energy came from renewable sources in 2005, which compared with Sweden's 39.8 per cent., Portugal's 20.5 per cent., Finland's 28.5 per cent., and the Czech Republic's 6.1 per cent. We are very low down the table. I believe that only Luxembourg with 0.9 per cent. and Malta, a small island without a history on renewables, came below the UK.
	We need to see significant changes in policy if we are to achieve the kind of development that we need. Like many hon. Members here tonight, I have a constituency interest, in that a range of planning applications is pending, including for wind farms, which provide part of the solution, but only a very small part. We need to look at all the other forms of renewable energy that are available, and ensure that we enable speedy research and get the financial resources to put into development. We do not know for sure which forms of renewable energy we will rely on in the future, so we have to put a financial regime in place that encourages development of all the various forms.
	We also need to recognise that we are not talking only about electricity generation. To meet our carbon targets, we need to ensure that we are more effective in our use of the electricity that we produce. That goes beyond this directive, but will be essential in ensuring that we meet our targets. Transport will also have a major role to play, but that is an issue for another day.
	What is important in this debate is not our discussion today about the exact method used to meet these targets, but whether we should have the targets at all. If we sign up to the directive and the potentially legally mandatory targets, action could be taken against us if we do not meet them. I support the Government's courageous position, in Europe and domestically, on the Climate Change Bill, which contains mandatory targets for carbon reduction. This directive fits well with our domestic policy, and for that reason I strongly support the Government's position on the directive.

Michael Weir: I was interested in the animated discussion with the Minister about oil reserves. History is being rewritten, but if Scotland had been given its oil all those years ago, the Minister would have been saved a lot of angst.
	The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) made a comment about the Scottish Government's record on wind power, although he would not take an intervention on it. The present Scottish Government have granted proportionally more wind farms in their first year than the Government of which the hon. Gentleman's party was a member.
	There is much that is good about the document and I am generally supportive of it. I was especially interested in what it says about transmission charges— an old hobby-horse of mine that I am sure the Minister will be pleased to hear about again—as they relate to renewable energy in Scotland. I will not go through all that in great detail again as the Minister has listened to the arguments on many occasions about how renewable generation in Scotland is handicapped by the transmission charge regime introduced by Ofgem.
	Article 14 of the document says that renewable sources should be given access to the system and that the rules should be
	"objective, transparent and non-discriminatory...taking particular account of all the costs and benefits associated with the connection".
	I hope that the Minister will explain how that will fit in with the present Ofgem regime, which is clearly discriminatory against renewable producers—or indeed any producers in a remote area. The document may mean that the UK Government have to look again at the transmission regime to ensure that it is non-discriminatory.
	I agree with the Minister that we should not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to biofuels, but the document is not clear about the position of imported biofuels. At the moment, much of the biofuel used in the European Union is imported, mainly from the US, which—given that it has not signed up to previous agreements, such as Kyoto—is unlikely to sign up to any agreement on biofuels soon, pending a possible change in the Administration. Massive grants are given to farmers in the American mid-west for the production of biofuels, and their withdrawal could lead to a farming crisis there.
	Will the targets for biofuels in the document be purely for the production of biofuels within the EU, or will moves be made against the importation of biofuels from outside that are not deemed to be sustainable? How would that fit in with World Trade Organisation rules, because that is a potential problem?
	In an intervention, I raised the issue of renewables obligation certificates. I apologise to the Minister because I said that only tide and wave would be affected, but deep-water offshore wind will also be affected. I have written to the Minister about this before. He is right to say that grants are given to experimental schemes, but the difficulty is that the new system for ROCs will not allow such schemes to be developed and then to receive the double-banded ROCs for the future generation of electricity. Under the Energy Bill, the companies will have to choose between repaying the grant that they have already received or taking the double ROCs. The problem is that the companies need the grant money to get the projects up and running, but to generate the electricity they will also need the new ROC system.
	The difficulty is that companies may get the grant money but then be unable to generate electricity. If they take the double-banded ROCs, they will have to pay back the grant money that got them up and running in the first place. That is a serious problem of great concern to developers, especially of the Beatrice scheme in the Moray firth and wave and tidal power schemes in the Pentland firth. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) has also contacted the Minister about the latter schemes, and the issue may be debated in the other place when the Energy Bill is debated there.
	I urge the Minister to consider these representations. As other hon. Members have pointed out, these targets are very strict and will be difficult to meet. We should all recognise that, but unless we get the system right we have no chance of meeting them. The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Ms Clark) is right to say that wind power is only one part of the picture. We all recognise that, and we must have a suite of different renewables if we are to have any chance of meeting the targets.

Colin Challen: The one Post-it note that I want to mention in this contribution, which will necessarily be very short, is attached to the memorandum of explanation from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and its reference to the fact that the EU has decided that if there is an international agreement on climate change, the target for reducing carbon emissions will rise from 20 per cent. by 2020 to 30 per cent. by 2020. I hope that that agreement will be signed in Copenhagen next year, which suggests that the targets for renewable energy's contribution to reducing our CO2 emissions may have to be revised in little more than 18 months' time if they are to make a contribution to the increased target.
	If that is the case, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will put a Post-it note in his red box to ask his civil servants to start thinking about plan B. They have clearly not paid as serious attention as one might hope to plan A, and we have heard that under the current plans we will struggle to get to a 5 per cent. renewable energy contribution by 2020. Going to 15 per cent. will be even tougher. I do not think that the way to approach that is to say that we will introduce more flexible mechanisms, seek renewable trading certificates and so on. We need to start investing seriously in our economy, as the Germans and Danes have done. There are problems in the delivery of wind turbines because Siemens in Germany and Vestas in Denmark simply cannot keep up with demand. Why do we not have our own wind turbine industry on a massive scale, employing hundreds of thousands of people, as is the case in Germany with the renewables industry?
	We can do it if we want to. I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), who said that we should not have punitive measures. We need those punitive measures to drive along the aspirations that we have not seriously tried to fulfil in the past.

Peter Luff: I shall be exceptionally brief, and I thank the Minister for his indulgence. I have three quick points. First, will he clarify whether these will be binding national targets, as the Commission makes it clear that they will be? What will be the sanctions if they are breached, or if we fail to meet them? Can we predict what action the European Court of Justice is likely to take if we fail to meet those targets?
	Secondly, may I press the Minister again on renewable heat? Paragraph 20 of the preamble talks about exempting those in households from
	"guarantees of origin for heating or cooling".
	In my view, the big gains available to the UK in terms of renewable energy come from renewable domestic heat. They cannot be measured for target purposes, which calls the targets into question, but the big gains in climate change and energy security and supply will come from such things as solar thermal power for water heating.
	Thirdly, in his explanatory memorandum, on page 355 of the documents, the Minister stated:
	"Achieving the level of ambition implied by the proposed UK target of 15 per cent. will require significant increases in the levels of electricity derived from renewable energy sources by 2020."
	When he last came before the Select Committee that I chair, he gave some interesting figures for what he thinks the increases in electricity generation will be. Will he confirm that 35 or 40 per cent. will be required? I repeat the question that I put earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry): is this target achievable? Are we signing up to something that we know, in our heart of hearts, we cannot reach?

Malcolm Wicks: Yes, it is an achievable target. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Ms Clark) said, we are setting ourselves interim targets for climate change and carbon reductions through the Climate Change Bill. I thought that that was a very neat answer to the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb), who rather implied that we were not setting ourselves interim targets. After all, the overall focus has to be on carbon reduction, and renewables are an important means to that end.
	May I clarify a point, as I may have misled the House—

Robert Smith: Will the Minister give way?

Malcolm Wicks: No. I may have misled the House when I started talking about combined heat and power. Let me confirm that the target is for renewable energy, including heat, electricity and transport. I did not mean to be rude to the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith), but I am conscious that I have only about five minutes left. I ask him to forgive me.
	There are too many pessimists in the House on these matters. Let me give hon. Members some figures to show where we are with onshore and offshore wind provision. We now have about 2.5 GW of wind power in operation, 1.3 GW being built, 5.3 GW consented and 9.69 GW in planning. Those are quite formidable figures and I do not think it helps anyone to talk down this emerging British industry. The hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) quoted a figure of 70 GW of wind power. We will consult on that and look at estimates, but the advice that I have received is that that figure is likely to be a significant overestimate.
	We have discussed European comparisons, as we do on these occasions. Some hon. Members should look carefully at this. Renewable energy accounted for 8.4 per cent. of all EU energy in 2005, which was an increase of just 1.5 per cent. of the share 10 years earlier. That suggests that we are not in a situation where some countries are moving ahead at a rapid speed during the 10-year period that the hon. Member for Northavon focused on. The increase was just 1.5 per cent. That suggests to me that the challenge is for all member states. When we look across the piece at the huge concentrations of renewable energy, we find that they are often in places where there are hydro resources. Hon. Members need just to look at the figures and they will see that that is true. Others include biomass resources, including the use of wood stoves. There is a challenge for the whole industry.
	I was asked about costs. The renewable energy strategy will say more, but our initial research suggests that the cost to the UK of meeting a 15 per cent. target could be about £5 billion a year by 2020. We have to be mindful of the costs at a time when energy costs are high. They will fluctuate, but the days of low-cost energy are over. We therefore need to be mindful of a cost-effective way of meeting our targets.
	I quite understand the points that have been raised about the transmission access review. It is important to developers to get a suitable connection when they are ready. I do not think that they are so interested in getting a preference. Indeed, in terms of balancing the grid as we go forward with more renewables, we simply could not give all preference to renewables. We need to look at the issues about balance very carefully.
	I was asked whether article 15 would not permit us to have stricter sustainability standards than prescribed in the directive. We will press for the directive to include sustainability standards that cover the same range of issues as our renewable transport fuel obligation. Subject to the directive's being amended to include an acceptable set of sustainability criteria, we support the proposal that there should be the same criteria throughout the EU, as that will help to promote an efficient internal market for biofuels.
	May I clarify that we have never said that CCS is a renewable? Of course it is not. However, at an early stage we tried to argue to the Commission that if the European Union is serious about 12 CCS projects across Europe, we need to have some ideas about where they will come from. We in the UK are moving forward with a major demonstration project, but we are worried about the incentives to bring other CCS projects forward and we will continue to press that point.
	We think that trading schemes will play a part, but we and other member states agree that that should not be at the expense of national support systems for renewables. We need to have regard, as I have emphasised, to cost-effectiveness, and trading could play a part in all this.
	We have had a useful and quite detailed debate in the time available. I will not have been able to pick up on all the points that have been raised. I am prepared to write to hon. Members—

Charles Hendry: rose—

Malcolm Wicks: I think that the clock is against us, but the hon. Gentleman can try a quick one.

Charles Hendry: What is the Minister's view on whether there should be qualified majority voting or unanimity?

Malcolm Wicks: We think that this will probably be settled by qualified majority voting. I think that that is the reality of what is likely to happen. This is a challenge for the whole of Europe, however, and we must work with Europe on it. I want to emphasise that the UK Government are committed to our share of 15 per cent. or thereabouts, and we will do our utmost to hit that target. I am confident that we will.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House takes note of European Union document No. 5421/08 and Addenda 1-2, draft Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable resources; notes the Government's support for the European Commission's proposal for increasing the renewable energy share of final EU energy consumption to 20 per cent. by 2020 as part of a balanced energy mix; further notes the importance of the Commission's parallel proposals in the EU package for strengthening of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, so as to provide the basis for a global carbon market and enable emission reductions to be made in the most cost-effective way; recognises the significant contribution that attainment of the renewable targets can make to the European Union's efforts to tackle climate change, enhance geo-political security of supply and provide the EU with the opportunity to capitalise on significant business and innovation benefits; further recognises the ambitious nature of the proposed legally binding targets; and urges that the Directive should be revised to provide Member States with sufficient flexibility as to ensure that the overall EU and Member State renewables targets can be achieved in a cost-effective way.

Maritime Policy

Jim Fitzpatrick: I beg to move,
	That this House takes note of European Union documents No. 14631/07 and Addenda 1-5, Commission Communication, An Integrated Maritime Policy for the European Union and No. 14176/07, Commission Staff Working Document on Maritime Clusters; and endorses the Government's approach to these documents.
	Good evening, Madam Deputy Speaker. I begin by welcoming the interest of the House in the European Commission integrated maritime policy and the opportunity to set out the Government's view on that Commission initiative. The subject of today's debate is indeed broad. It follows directly on from an earlier debate in the temporary European Standing Committee last March on the Government's position in respect of the Commission's maritime Green Paper, "Towards a future Maritime Policy for the Union: A European Vision for the Oceans and Seas", which was the focus of a large-scale consultation exercise by the European Commission on its vision for the future development of a maritime policy for the European Union. That debate cleared the way for the Government's formal response to the Commission's consultation, and that response is included in the document pack with which hon. Members have been provided for the debate.
	The Commission papers that we are discussing today derive directly from the Green Paper consultation. The Commission considered nearly 500 consultation responses from Governments, social partners and other interested parties. Before I turn my attention to the content of the new policy package, I should like to draw the attention of hon. Members to two things that are not contained therein. The maritime Green Paper proposed for consideration the idea of a European shipping register, which could have supplanted national registers, and a European-wide coastguard. In their response to the Green Paper, the Government strongly opposed those suggestions, as did other respondents. I am pleased to report to the House that those ideas do not appear in the new integrated maritime policy package.

Andrew Turner: The Minister knows of my concern about planned changes to the tonnage tax regime. I would welcome clarity on whether the change in the interpretation of seagoing vessels is being insisted on by the EU, the Department for Transport, the Treasury or at the behest of the Revenue and Customs. The proposals could impose higher costs on UK shipping generally and cross-Solent ferry services in particular.

Jim Fitzpatrick: The tonnage tax is an important issue for the shipping industry. It certainly does not feature, if I recollect correctly, anywhere in the notes that I am about to deliver on behalf of the Department, but I can advise the hon. Gentleman that the threat of a change in tonnage tax regulations that we feared would adversely impact on the success that we have derived from the arrangements in recent years has receded, that the Commission is revisiting its proposals and that the tonnage tax will therefore continue to be to our advantage. In that instance, we are not worried by what is happening in Europe as a result. I can write to the hon. Gentleman to give him much more detail in due course, but the tax is not part of the package that I am referring to this evening.
	The EU maritime Green Paper sought to take forward the Lisbon strategy on sustainable growth by stimulating employment in the maritime sector and by applying ecosystem-based management of marine resources and the marine environment. It addressed important policy areas, including the retention of Europe's leadership on sustainable maritime development, the maximisation of the quality of life in coastal regions, governance issues in the EU and the wider international arena, the reclamation of Europe's maritime heritage and the reaffirmation of its maritime identity.
	Those themes are broadly continued in the new maritime policy package, taking into account the consultation responses received by the Commission. The paper, "An integrated maritime policy for the European Union", together with its supporting documents, which include an action plan, sets out a vision for a joined-up approach to maritime policy, taking as its premise a perception that all matters that relate to marine areas that surround Europe are, in essence, linked to one another. Therefore, it proposes the idea that all marine-related policies must develop within a governance framework that embraces a shared cognisance of those connections to ensure that the best results are achieved and that positive developments in one area do not inadvertently blight progress or prospects elsewhere. I emphasise that no firm legislative proposals stem from the package at this stage.
	The Government note that the European Council conclusions of 14 December 2007 gave a broad welcome to the Commission's initiative and invited the Commission to progress the initiatives and proposals contained in the action plan, which forms part of the package. We await the appropriate developments.
	Turning now to the documents under scrutiny this evening, the lead document in the package sets out the concept of an integrated maritime policy. It provides an analytical framework and a set of objectives that lay the foundations for the accompanying action plan in addendum 2. The other supporting papers contain a discussion of the Green Paper consultation responses, an impact assessment and a summary thereof, and a European Commission staff working document that looks at the connections and synergies between the energy policy for Europe agreed at the European Council in March 2007 and maritime policy.
	The lead communication declares that the new package aims to enhance Europe's capacity to face challenges of globalisation and competitiveness, the effects of climate change, environmental damage, maritime safety and security, energy needs and sustainability. Allied to that goal is a desire to enhance employment and economic growth, underpinned by high standards of research, technology and innovation. The keynote is that the way in which maritime policy is made would be changed. Rather than policy being developed through compartmentalised dossiers, it would develop as an integrated form that recognised the relationships and interactions between different activities in the maritime sphere.

Julian Brazier: Although the Minister is making a cogent case for considering these matters in the round—indeed, any Government should do so—it appears that the Government's response accepts to some extent that some matters should be dealt with in international forums by the International Maritime Organisation, rather than being specific EU competences.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Certainly, as the Government, we are always conscious that, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out, the IMO is the international regulatory body. It is an arm of the United Nations. We believe that it has competence in certain areas where the EU does not. Therefore, we must be aware of the role that it plays, as well as that which the Commission plays.

Alistair Carmichael: I was mildly concerned at first that the jargon in the Minister's speech was his own, but I now see that he is quoting more or less verbatim from various passages to be found in the documents. I endorse the view expressed by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) about the IMO and the importance of our role in that respect. Can the Minister assure the House that, in fact, there will be no question of the House or this country giving up its role as a direct inputter to the IMO in favour of an EU voice?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I can certainly assure the House, as I assured the Greek Transport Minister in Athens yesterday morning, that we would not surrender our national voice at the IMO in favour of a European voice, that we believe that all the very strong maritime nations of the EU have articulated most strongly that they wanted to maintain their separate identity and voice at the IMO and that the EU should not take our place.

Michael Weir: Taking things further back, some progress, albeit small in recent years, has been made, particularly with fishing communities, in taking some decision making closer to the communities through management plans and the Scottish fishermen's voluntary scheme on environmental matters. Can the Minister assure us that such movement will not be jeopardised by the new pan-European scheme that is before the House today and that the interests of the fishing and other maritime communities around these islands will be closely considered?

Jim Fitzpatrick: If I do not come to the assurance that the hon. Gentleman seeks during my introductory remarks, I am pretty sure that I can reassure him in my concluding remarks. I have already been pulled in the direction of our world role in maritime affairs, but we are not at risk of neglecting localism and the ability of local communities to play an important role in formulating policy. I am sure that my remarks will cover the hon. Gentleman's point, but if they do not, I shall be happy to return to the issue in my concluding remarks.

Bob Spink: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being most gracious. How will the marine policy that we are discussing impact on Norway's management of the waters within its 200-mile limit, and will there be any discussions between Norway and the EU—or have those discussions already commenced?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I will have to come back to the hon. Gentleman on the detail of his question. On maintaining our direct relationship with Norway, obviously we will have to take its views into account when formulating European policy, as we always do.

Robert Smith: I have been in correspondence with the Minister on the benefits that ship-routing services can have in reducing the air pollution from shipping. I see that the Government are committed to the idea that it is the IMO that should make the regulations, as the Minister said in his letter to me. My constituent, Aerospace and Marine International, which is based in Banchory, provides a ship-routing service. Will he assist that company by meeting the IMO to discuss taking forward an improvement to the regulation of shipping, in order to reduce CO2 emissions through the use of that service?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The IMO is actively looking into those issues at the moment. I think that I am right in saying that the next major conference in which the issues will be discussed is in September or October this year. Certainly the IMO is conscious that it is the body that ought to regulate the shipping sector because it is best able to represent international opinion and put together international agreement. It is actively considering the challenge to climate change from salts, knots and CO2. As for the assurance for his constituent, if he will allow me, I will come back to him on that, because that is a very specific issue.
	I am glad that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) said that I was quoting from the documents; I would not want to mislead the House, so we are relying extensively on what has been prepared. As I said earlier, we do not have any firm proposals. We have guidance to take us towards where the European Commission wants to get to. There is still a great degree of vagueness about the conclusions.

Katy Clark: I welcome the review of European Community labour law exemptions for the shipping and fishing sectors. Will my hon. Friend outline the Government's likely approach in those negotiations?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I think that I will be able to come back to that point later and will be able to give my hon. Friend some of the reassurance that she seeks. The hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) asked about the relationship between Norway and the EU. It has just occurred to me that Norway has been involved in the formulation of the EU maritime policy. As he knows, Norway is naturally a key ally for the UK, and obviously we would want to include it and its position in our considerations. I suggested to the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) that the next meeting of the IMO was in the autumn; the next inter-sessional meeting will take place later this month. It is the IMO's marine environment protection committee that meets in the autumn.

Bob Spink: Will the Minister give way?

Jim Fitzpatrick: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will make a little more progress; I am halfway through my remarks, and am naturally conscious that the debate lasts only 90 minutes and a number of colleagues clearly want to contribute.
	It is envisaged that common tools will be needed, synergetic approaches adopted, and conflicts of interest avoided or resolved. The action plan sets out ways in which the Commission's overarching vision might be realised through an integrated approach to governance. That includes the use of cross-cutting tools to help policy makers and economic and environmental stakeholders to join up their activities and optimise the use of marine and coastal space in a sustainable manner. Those tools, as set out in the documents under discussion, comprise a more integrated network of surveillance systems for European waters, the development of marine spatial planning, and an EU observation and data network to bring coherence to the existing fragmented maritime data collection initiatives.
	The action plan enumerates details of various broad areas of activity, grouped thematically. They include maximising the sustainable use of the seas, the development of a knowledge and innovation base, delivering a better quality of life in Europe's coastal regions, promoting Europe's leadership in international maritime affairs, and raising the visibility of maritime Europe. In connection with the latter objective, I hope that hon. Members were aware that last month—on 20 May, to be precise—the European Union celebrated the inaugural European maritime day—the first tangible output of the new integrated maritime policy.
	Particularly significant aspects of the action plan address a European network of maritime surveillance; a road map for member states to assist in the development of maritime spatial planning; the development of maritime clusters, which is the subject of a separate document included for consideration in this debate; the creation of a European maritime transport space without barriers; the review of EU labour law exemptions for the shipping and fishing sectors—perhaps that deals with the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Ms Clark) raised—ways to cut pollution from shipping, including greenhouse gases; action on marine-based energy infrastructures and resources to facilitate high-level investment; an ecosystem-based approach to fishing; a new maritime research strategy; a strategy to ameliorate the effects of climate change in coastal areas; and the development of integrated maritime policies at national level. It is a lengthy and ambitious programme.
	The Government have welcomed the significant effort expended by the Commission in producing that wide-ranging package. In broad terms, the desire for a joined-up approach across marine policy areas is a welcome development. Our seas and coasts have multiple uses. They are used for the movement of people and goods, fishing, the utilisation of energy resources, and leisure activities. It makes sense that measures governing any one activity should not be progressed without an accompanying examination of the impact on all other activities that might be affected. Indeed, that is precisely the approach that the Government have taken in developing our domestic legislation, namely the Marine Bill.
	In considering the new policy package, the Government maintain the approach brought to bear in the consideration of the package's precursor, the EU maritime Green Paper. The new approach must entail the need to respect the principle of subsidiarity, and the need to ensure that new measures add value to existing national, Community and wider international arrangements. Of course, each new proposal needs to be accompanied by a sound business case.

Alistair Carmichael: Is the Minister able to explain to the House, or will he publish later, what exactly the Government's targets are for measuring the added value that we will get from the proposals, and what the performance indicators will be?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I should be happy to come back to that in my closing remarks. Our difficulty, very straightforwardly, is that without the detail of the proposals, we are not able to say, "We like this, but we don't like that. We want to go this way, and we want to push further in that direction." To a certain extent, tonight's debate will obviously be dissatisfying and inconclusive, because we do not have the detailed proposals that we might want to debate and discuss, so that we can decide on what is best for the UK.

Michael Weir: In the previous debate, we heard that the document under discussion was being pushed through so that it would be agreed to before the 2009 elections to the European Parliament. Is the same being done with the document that we are considering, and if not, can the Minister give us a time scale for when its provisions are likely to come into effect?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Gentleman has the advantage on me, as he sat through and participated in the last debate, and I was not present, sadly, to hear my ministerial colleague explain the timetable. We do not have such a timetable, and because the detail has not been worked out, it is not clear what the time scale will be. I will try and get some additional information for the hon. Gentleman to give him some indication how long the process is likely to take.
	We have an opportunity to add value by exemplifying an approach that injects the consideration of sustainability issues at the outset of deliberations, combining thinking on energy policy and climate change, and incorporating thorough impact assessments. Consideration of climate change and renewable energy issues would be an integral part of Community and member state development and investment policies. Moreover, the new package represents an opportunity to underpin maritime policy making with ecosystem-based management, which is important for the sustainable use of marine resources. I should welcome the views of the House.

Julian Brazier: I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate maritime matters on the Floor of the House, and particularly to debate the EU's approach to such matters. The House should be grateful to the European Scrutiny Committee for recommending that we have this opportunity.
	The subject is under-debated. The maritime sector, if one includes ancillary industries and services ranging from Rolls-Royce's world-beating engines to maritime insurance and law, is the UK's third largest industry. It supports almost 250,000 jobs and contributes an estimated £11 billion a year to our economy, yet its national footprint is minuscule. Even though 95 per cent., by weight, of all goods brought into the country come by sea, the sector is almost ignored by the media and wider public, except when there is a disaster at sea, such as the beaching of the Napoli, or when a tanker unleashes a slick of oil, which, mercifully, is extremely rare now.
	So I am pleased to speak in the debate, and pleased that it falls so close to the newly introduced European maritime day, one of the items that comes up in the bundle of documents that we are discussing. It is one small item that we, the official Opposition, welcome, although I am a little concerned that it does not seem to have developed much beyond Maritime Ministers meeting in Athens to toast each other with much champagne. I would be interested to hear the Minister's proposals for extending the reach of the maritime day to the public at large and what measures he will be taking with the industry to boost its public profile. I must say, in fairness to him, that I know he is personally committed to that.
	In the three years or so that I have been covering maritime affairs for the Opposition, the European Union's Commissioner for Maritime Affairs seems to have had something of a change of heart. It certainly needed to change. That directorate used to be one of the worst examples of Euro-fanaticism in the whole Commission. Let us hope that the change of heart is permanent.
	One of the issues that has been of the greatest concern and that has reared its head several times is the threat of an EU register and the development of an EU flag for our merchant vessels. I was delighted to hear once again that the Government have pledged their opposition to those plans, and I join them in welcoming the fact that the Commission has dropped the plans in the current document, but vigilance is still important. I see the Minister nodding. Such a proposal, particularly the creation of an EU register, would essentially create a new flag state, demanding a common seat on international bodies such as the International Maritime Organisation and a common coastguard.
	As the Minister said, the proposal for the creation of a common coastguard has been dropped. That is a relief, not least because of the nature of many of the coastguards in the European Union with which our own Maritime and Coastguard Agency would have been merged. I shall single out the Greek coastguard, as I dealt recently with a particularly horrid constituency case. After the trial of the coastguards concerned, it became clear that there had been a number of cases of sexual abuse of migrants, and even allegations of throwing illegal immigrants into the sea. Britain has a long and honourable tradition in its coastguard. Not only are there extreme examples such as the Greek one, but a merger would be ridiculous when the circumstances are so different around the European Union. Indeed, some countries have no coastline at all.
	The debate provides an opportunity to chide the Government for a moment for allowing the operating conditions of the coastguard to deteriorate to the point where we have had three one-day strikes by the paid employees and one strike by the coastguard volunteers, the very first examples of industrial action by our coastguard—Her Majesty's Coastguard, as it used to be called—in its centuries-old history. Given that those men and women are responsible for rescues involving up to 50,000 people a year, it seems extraordinary that the staff are so poorly paid and start on salaries of around £12,000 per annum.

Angus MacNeil: I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman, and I am grateful to him for giving way. The Public and Commercial Services Union has said that it would cost about £3 million to sort out the dispute. If his party were to become the Government, would it look to meet the coastguard's demands and end the dispute, which could be done at the stroke of a pen?

Julian Brazier: The hon. Gentleman intervenes at an opportune moment. I was about to say that I was delighted to be able to announce in the recent debate in Westminster Hall that, after discussion with my colleagues in the shadow Treasury team, although we obviously cannot underwrite a blank cheque, we are committed to a specific review confined to the MCA to look at its salaries in the context specifically of the other emergency services.

Michael Connarty: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As the Chairman of the Committee that sent the documents to the House to be debated, I cannot see the relevance of this discussion to the documents before us, and it takes away time from the matters that we should be discussing.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman can safely leave such matters to the Chair.

Julian Brazier: I had in fact completed my point on that.

Angus MacNeil: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Julian Brazier: Briefly, once more.

Angus MacNeil: I am not by any means asking for a blank cheque. I am merely asking for £3 million. The one thing that the coastguard unions told us was that they had been reviewed to death by the Government. If the hon. Gentleman's party became the next Government, can he promise not a blank cheque, but a £3 million cheque and no more reviews?

Julian Brazier: The short answer is that I cannot promise a specific sum, but our review would be different in that it would be specifically in the context of the other emergency services, a linkage that, to date, has not been acknowledged.
	Nevertheless, I share the Government's strong opposition to the EU's original plans for merging the coastguard and, like the Government, I recognise that we need closer co-operation between the different coastguard services. I enjoyed my recent visit to the MCA at its headquarters in Dover, and I thank the Minister for facilitating that. I was struck by the points that the coastguard made to me about the importance of developing a better relationship with its French counterparts, which is a relatively recent suggestion.
	One plan that does not seem to have disappeared from the documents is the Commission's ambition, albeit more tentatively stated, to take up a role within the various international organisations relating to the sea, not least the IMO. The Government have not been quite as hostile to that proposal as they have to some others. Their document declares that
	"an attempt to seek a wider Community role"
	in the IMO
	"is likely to be counterproductive".
	That is welcome, but there seems to be more ambiguity over other multilateral organisations. I would be grateful if the Minister clarified whether he thinks that there is any international organisation with a role in shipping in which there should be a greater EU presence at the expense of member states. The plain fact is that different member states have different interests. Some do not even have a coastline, and none has the kind of maritime hub that we enjoy in London. It is essential that British interests continue to be represented in international bodies instead of having a joint EU presence.
	While discussing the EU's relationship with the IMO, I should like to support the Government's statement on inadequate standards of ships with certain flags. We are all concerned about the quality of control with certain registers but, like the Government, the Opposition believe:
	"The correct fora to address this matter are the IMO and the Port State Control MOUs"—
	not, by implication, the EU. This is valid across a wide range of issues where the EU has decided to go off on a proposal by itself without consulting the rest of the world. I am thinking, for example, of the North sea and the Baltic SOx—sulphur oxide—emission control area. Because this is an EU rule rather than an IMO one, Intertanko, which represents more than 75 per cent. of the world's independent tanker fleet, has reported that large numbers of ships not flagged to an EU state have simply decided to ignore the ruling and refused to bunker low-sulphur fuel, preferring—on balance of probabilities, it is a commercially sound decision, however antisocial—the risk of getting caught. That is a classic example of a good intention implemented by a body out of touch with the market leading to unintended consequences. By acting unilaterally, the EU has merely put an extra burden on to its own vessels at a time when there are already other pressures for people to leave European flags and register under other flags. The right way to make progress on these matters is to negotiate them through the long, hard route of the IMO, which can deliver on this.
	While discussing the difficulties in persuading companies to flag to the UK, there are two matters obliquely touched on in the documents that the Government ought to be taking more seriously with the Commission. The first is the threat to the UK fleet of proposals to force UK-registered vessels to pay equal salaries to all its EU-national sailors, regardless of the salary the sailor could expect in his or her home state. This will not result in a fairer deal for poorer EU nationals, as the Commission hopes, nor will it result in more UK seafarers being hired, as the unions might hope—all that it will do is put further pressure on companies to flag out instead of paying higher wages. In that way, they will not even have to pay for the training of UK cadets, as the tonnage tax, rightly in our view, demands.
	That brings me to the tonnage tax, which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) has already mentioned. I was partly comforted by the Minister's answer. None the less, it is well known that the European Commission is casting its eyes over the UK tonnage tax, coming on top of the Government's own restrictions. As I have acknowledged publicly several times, the tonnage tax is an achievement by this Government that we welcome and believe in. However, the changes that were made to lease arrangements were not seen as helpful at a time when owners can see that other countries have introduced their own equivalents to the tonnage tax. More recently, the proposed amendments to the Finance Bill, which have fortunately now been dropped, sent out a worrying signal to the market that the tonnage tax regime may not be stable. Members will have seen stories in the media that Evergreen is considering re-flagging to Singapore, with the future of the tonnage tax at the top of its list of concerns. I was glad to hear the Minister's answer on this, but if he can strengthen it a little in his final response, that will be welcomed by the industry. We need to make it clear that this is not an area where the European Commission should be interfering.
	There is much in the documents about maritime clusters and how the EU should support them. As we all know, the world's leading maritime cluster is right here in London, and it is, to some extent, threatened by the EU. The Minister must impress upon his colleagues in the Treasury and in the Commission that this, particularly where the tonnage tax is concerned, could be the unwrapping of what has been a considerable success.
	The last of the Commission plans that has wisely been dropped is the directive on access for ports. The line-up against that directive has been very interesting. The European Transport Workers Federation has stood side by side with the port of London, Dutch socialists and Conservative MEPs. I was delighted to see that the proposal had gone. One thing that came up again and again in the debates on that issue was the flexible approach that our continental cousins take when it comes to interpreting European regulations—not a situation unique to shipping. I endorse the Minister's comments about the suggestion that an added duty for the Commission to ensure that all EU ports operate in the same environmental framework and use similar regimes of interpretation and enforcement is important.
	There are things in the document to support and a few remaining things that need fairly vigorous opposition. On this occasion, the Government seem, on the whole, to support that which needs supporting and to oppose that which needs opposition. There are areas where we feel that their opposition should be more vigorous but, on balance, it would be churlish to oppose the Government's motion.

Louise Ellman: I welcome this important debate, and I would like to thank the European Scrutiny Committee for its work in enabling the debate to go ahead in such a well-informed way.
	The maritime sector is vital to the economy of the United Kingdom, with 95 per cent. by volume and 75 per cent. by value of the UK's international trade transported by sea. In 2004, £330 billion of the UK's international trade moved through our seaports. Short-sea traffic trade with Europe and the Mediterranean accounted for 39 per cent. of all container traffic in 2004. The industry is important to our economy, and that importance justifies paying attention to the holistic approach to maritime policy we are asked to consider in the development of European integrated maritime policy. In terms of the UK, the issue is national, regional and European. Other perspectives involved in maritime policy include issues such as economic development and regeneration, the environment and security.
	The proposals in the documents deal with integration and the setting up of a European maritime policy. In the Government's comments on what are ongoing discussions rather than firm proposals, it is right that they have drawn attention to the importance of subsidiarity and of having added benefit when considering any widening of competences. I am pleased to see that, in the action plan, developing a European policy is not simply an issue of competence but one of considering decision-making on policy, setting up networks, sharing information and enabling expertise in one area to be used for the benefit of all. That is an important part of developing a European policy.
	I welcome the parts of the documents that refer to clusters. Clusters of maritime excellence are important and I have seen their benefit in the work done by Mersey Maritime, which has brought together different sectors in the industry. It has enabled tens of thousands of new jobs to be developed in the sector. It has supported training in the nautical sector and developed courses with local colleges, encouraging young people to become involved in nautical matters. Developing a cluster of maritime industries matters and it is important that that process is led effectively. I would like to see more work done, however, on its implications for Europe as a whole.
	I would like to point out three areas where there are significant concerns, and where, looking at the documents, it does not appear that the Government have given sufficient consideration to the policy as a whole. The first concern is about the competitiveness of United Kingdom ports in comparison with the rest of Europe, and in particular whether the privately owned United Kingdom ports compete on a level playing field with the subsidised, nationally owned European ports. Evidence given recently to the Select Committee on Transport showed that the capital costs for a terminal operator of opening a facility in the United Kingdom were three times as much as opening one in other parts of Europe. The question must be asked: why?
	The Government's ports consultation document states that United Kingdom applications for funding from the European regional development fund, the trans-European transport networks or the Marco Polo initiative for short-sea shipping must satisfy the Government as to their compatibility with fair competition between ports. We would not quarrel with that objective, but the question must be asked: is that criterion applied equally stringently in ports throughout Europe or does it concentrate simply on what is happening in the United Kingdom?
	My second concern is about the security of ports. The proposals in the documents for increased surveillance of ports are welcome. If that were done properly, it would be effective. However, there is also a proposal in the documentation for a European maritime transport space without barriers. More questions need to be asked about what that exactly means. The proposal talks about simplifying administrative and customs barriers, but what does that mean for growing security needs in cargo and loading in ports?
	Legislation enacted in the United States means that from 2010, ships sailing to the USA from foreign ports must be investigated and receive security clearance at their ports of origin. How will that relate to the European maritime transport space without barriers? I understand that some concern has been expressed in Europe about the American proposal, but it is not quite clear what that means. What does the proposal mean for the security of shipping entering our ports? That is an increasingly important question.
	My third concern is about freight policy. Attention has already been drawn to the importance of the United Kingdom's developing a more effective national freight policy. Infrastructure is particularly significant to the development of ports policy in the United Kingdom, and that means having better co-ordinated and integrated freight policy. However, there is a question mark over what is happening with freight from European operators. I understand that there is a proposal to allow European hauliers to operate wholly within the United Kingdom. What does that mean for maritime freight and United Kingdom hauliers? We do not have the answers to those questions, but there is growing public concern about the impact of freight operators from other parts of Europe on the United Kingdom's already hard-pressed haulage business.
	I should like the Government to go beyond the comments that they have already made and consider the specific issues that I have raised, so that as the debate continues and a much-needed European policy develops, we can ensure that the United Kingdom's interests are protected, although in the context of the also important European dimension.

Roger Williams: I congratulate the Minister on his fine précis of the documents before us. Without much effort at all, he could have taken up the entire debate.
	Although it is a privilege to debate such an important subject on the Floor of the House, if this debate were taking place in Committee, we would have an extra hour in which to probe the Government and ask the Minister some more definitive questions. The documents are full of high hopes and fine words, but have little substance. The test will be whether the policy can be turned into practical deeds and plans that will deliver for this country and for Europe. My hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) asked an incisive question about how much value added will result from the policy and what performance indicators will be used to test whether it has succeeded. I wonder whether the Minister will return to that question when he sums up. I think that he used the terms "integrated", "cross-cutting" and "synergetic" several times, all of which are hallmarks of a good European paper, but the Government must be clearer about how the policy will be delivered and what benefits will flow from it.
	The marine environment and maritime areas are not only important to Europe; they are very important to Britain. Europe has 70,000 km of coastline along two oceans and four seas, and the geographical nature of Britain means that it will have a greater proportion of coast than Europe. As the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) said, some European countries have no coastline and will not have such a great interest in this issue.

Robert Smith: My hon. Friend makes the important point that several European nations will not have a direct interest. When it comes to the fishing aspect of marine policy, is it not important to have regional management so that only countries with a coastal interest in a particular fishery are involved in its management?

Roger Williams: My hon. Friend makes an important point, which our party has emphasised in trying to bring some reform to the single fisheries policy and make it more localised.

Angus MacNeil: Surely, the reform of the common fisheries policy that is required is its outright abolition.

Roger Williams: That might be the policy of the hon. Gentleman's party, but the Liberal Democrats realise that it would be very difficult to have a fisheries policy that did not take into account the fact that fish move from one part of a sea to another and that we must therefore have some control over the fisheries of other nations as well as our own.

Bob Spink: The documents mention the objective of
	"maximising the sustainable use of the...seas".
	The hon. Gentleman talks about warm words from Europe, but are not those yet more warm words from Europe? How does that objective sit with a common fisheries policy that sees us throwing back more fish dead than are landed legally across the whole of Europe every year?

Roger Williams: I take on board the hon. Gentleman's point, but I do not think that there is a nation in the European Union that does not believe that there could be some improvement to the fisheries policy.

Angus MacNeil: The hon. Gentleman says that fish swim in the ocean between certain nations, but is not the reality that fish swim from European Union waters to Norwegian waters? Tiny Norway is the most powerful fishing nation in the whole of Europe, but it is outside the common fisheries policy. It has more say and greater control over fishing than any country in the EU.

Roger Williams: I thought that Norway might come up at some stage. I am sure that intelligent fish will also recognise the hon. Gentleman's point. It might be that the European Union has negotiations with Norway about fisheries, and perhaps that can be built on.
	It is not only fisheries that contribute to the economic importance of the coast and the maritime environment; trade is also important, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) pointed out. Populations also tend to cluster or accumulate in greater densities around coastal areas because of the economic activity that goes on there, and because better climates are often associated with those areas. There is therefore greater population and greater economic activity in those areas, and they are important to the economy of the nations concerned. The tourism industry is important to Britain, and various aspects of this policy reflect that importance. I hope that more people in this country will change their holiday habits and support our coastal towns a little more, and perhaps spend less of their money abroad. Holidays in this country are certainly worth while.
	A real problem in the marine environment is that, for too long, it has been regarded as a place in which to dispose of the detritus and waste produced by human activities. It is only in relatively recent years that we have understood that, however great the seas are and however accommodating their chemistry might be, we cannot keep on putting waste into the sea. That applies in physical terms, in regard to plastics, for example, and in regard to chemical and industrial effluent.

Julian Brazier: The hon. Gentleman started by saying that it was important for the EU to bring all these different strands together. He also talked about warm words. Surely, however, he is giving us a really good example of why the EU is the wrong body to bring these strands together. Chemicals move around the sea just as much as fish do, and the right way to tackle this issue is through the United Nations and the International Maritime Organisation.

Roger Williams: I would not disagree. The point has been made that it is important for Britain to maintain its membership of the IMO, and to involve itself in the discussions on the pollution in all our oceans. It is interesting that this debate is taking place on the same day as the first consideration of the draft Marine Bill by the Joint Committee of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. One of the points that was made when we considered it this morning was that the marine management organisation, which is the focal point of the Bill, should be the champion of the oceans. We asked whether the MMO would have enough capacity, manning and resources to be such a champion and to represent Britain on these matters.
	The documents state that there could be three ways of achieving the policy objectives. One would be to abandon any EU maritime policy altogether and to achieve the objectives through sectoral approaches instead, sector by sector. Decisions made in that way might be easier, but not necessarily consistent or co-ordinated, and I believe that it was right to reject that option. Another approach that was rejected was the structural or centralised approach, which would have brought together all aspects of maritime affairs in one organisation, integrating all legislation and budgets for maritime policy. That would have involved substantial internal reorganisation, with potential political and cost risks. All maritime policies are part of a wider policy area, and the integration of those policies could fragment other policies. There is, however, agreement to go ahead with a procedural approach that will involve co-ordinating existing methods.
	Briefly, on some of the subjects mentioned in the documents, we welcome the emphasis on an eco-system-based approach to fishing and fisheries. We welcome the emphasis on subsidiarity and on decisions being taken as locally as possible, and believe that EU guidance is useful, but we would not be in favour of any over-centralising, top-down approach to policy. Coastal communities vary greatly within countries, particularly across the EU, so a top-down approach would be unlikely to work. However, we welcome the recognition of coastal and maritime importance, as well as the establishment of marine protected areas and the introduction of the draft Marine Bill, which will give powers to do that in England and in the devolved nations.

Martin Horwood: Does my hon. Friend share my regret that during consideration of the Energy Bill, the Government resisted our attempts to give the MMO authority over some of the offshore installations provided for in that Bill, therefore cutting back the powers of that organisation before it has even been established?

Roger Williams: I welcome the idea that my hon. Friend is putting forward, which will perhaps be reconsidered in debates on the Marine Bill. Certainly, comments that have already been made are cautious about how well the MMO will be able to fulfil its functions.
	We welcome the potential to reduce pollution from ships, which will lead to cleaner ports, better fuel efficiency and increased use of renewables. We also welcome the emphasis on improved safety for fishermen while at sea, as the accident rate is too high. We should ensure that regulations do not move too far ahead of the international organisations and non-EU countries, disadvantaging the competitiveness of member states. We need to improve public awareness of the economic and environmental importance of maritime and coastal areas.

Julian Brazier: Again, the hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He says that he welcomes measures on pollution, but then says he welcomes recognition that we must not disadvantage our own industries. Does he or does he not accept that the right body to drive up standards on pollution is the IMO, so that we keep a level playing field and people stay within the law?

Roger Williams: I do not quite understand the last point. We have made our position clear: we wish the UK to retain IMO membership but believe that things can be achieved working together in the EU. Perhaps the word "synergy", which the Minister used, might be employed to some advantage.
	Lastly, we welcome the fact that it has been decided not to proceed with a European register of shipping and not to have a European coastguard. All in all, there is nothing in the documents that we cannot support, but we would wish to see more substantial ideas coming from the EU, and from the Government in particular, on how the proposals might benefit the coastal areas of the UK.

Michael Connarty: The documents were in fact considered by the Select Committee on European Scrutiny on 16 January 2008. It is in the eighth report of the Session 2007-08. The time scale is not for proposals by 2009. The extract from the European Council, which is on page 21 of our report, says that the Commission is invited
	"to report on progress achieved to the European Council at the end of 2009."
	There is quite a long way to go before it ever becomes legislation.
	I can assure the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) that our Committee will be referring any substantive points proposed for legislation to the European Committees. No doubt he will go along and argue those points in detail. Our Committee thinks that to send certain documents to the Floor of the House for debate is to give them a certain status in the public eye which means that people may then go and read the documents that you have taken the trouble to read—sorry, I should say documents that everyone has taken the trouble to read, perhaps including you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, although I am not quite sure. People will then get to know why they are of such import.
	The Minister should be commended for the fact that he was very thorough, not only in today's debate, but in his response to the Committee in his explanatory memorandum. He may have been reading from a report, but it was a report penned almost entirely by him, if my recollection is correct.
	I welcomed the first contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) as the new Chair of the Transport Committee. She has learnt her brief very quickly, given that this was sprung on her soon after her selection. I think that Members should also welcome, without churlishness, the fact that our Government have been so much a party to the movement within the discussions and consultation that rejected the European Union shipping register proposal. Our Government also took the lead in putting together forces that led the Commission to understand that it must reject the original proposal for a European Union coastguard. That is part of what the European Scrutiny Committee does in its relationship with the Government, through not a mandatory but a persuasive and, we hope, a supportive system, giving our Ministers strength to go and argue these cases and see off some silly ideas from the Commission.
	It is also clear that we have safeguarded our national voice in the International Maritime Organisation. The Commission will come back to us, of course. Let us be honest: it does that. There is Commission creep. The Commission will competence-creep, trying to put itself in a position in which it can speak for the whole of Europe, which may mean asking countries to be a little quieter so that its voice can be heard. I hope that that will be resisted at some point.
	We should also welcome any action that advances good maritime governance. I am sorry that such action has not been welcomed by those who thought that it should be done by the IMO. We are not in excellent condition. There is too much pollution, and there are too many problems with flagship sources and the behaviour of people in the maritime industry. The EU must think about what is to the best advantage of its own community, of which we are part.
	The idea that all marine-related policies must develop within a governance framework that embraces a shared recognition of those connections to ensure that the best results are achieved must surely be in all our interests. It is not contrary to our membership of the IMO. The Commission staff working document develops ideas in relation to maritime clusters in particular, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend. The Commission suggests that they could play a
	"role... in increasing competitiveness, boosting jobs and creating synergies between interrelated sectors."
	We already have maritime clusters in the United Kingdom. Paragraphs 2.8 to 2.10 of our report outline the concept in some detail. We should welcome the possibility of a European network of maritime clusters working together, some of which can be developed in other countries such as France, Germany and Poland. We already have a model, however. The south-west and the north-west, for instance, are working together in a way that I hope can also be welcomed.
	As I told the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams), the Commission intends to follow its documents with detailed proposals. I assure him that the European Scrutiny Committee will recommend debate on some, if not all, of them. There are also aspects of the Government's approach that should be welcomed. It strongly emphasises the concept of subsidiarity, as paragraph 2.15 on page 19 of our report makes clear.
	We are wary about proposals for more data collection. Paragraph 2.14 on page 18 of the report points out that there is already a collection network, which is not a single organisation but the result of co-operation between a number of research organisations. The possible threat to our competitiveness, which worried the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier)—the possibility that our competitive advantage will somehow be done down if the European Union takes an overarching role—is a threat faced by a number of countries, and one of which we should always be wary. When we standardise, we lose some of our competitive edge, as the Government point out in paragraph 2.14 on page 18.

Julian Brazier: That is not quite the point that I was making. Will the hon. Gentleman address the issue of the change in the SOx regime, which was introduced by the EU? It is a laudable goal—everyone wants to see lower SOx levels—but the effect was to disadvantage those on EU registers. Other countries, as the Intertanko survey shows, simply chose to disregard it on the basis that, on the balance of probabilities, they would not get caught even if they were trading with Europe.

Michael Connarty: The question of illegality is for the IMO, reinforced by the EU. We must work together on this. If IMO rules are not being policed well enough so that any EU country is disadvantaged, that disadvantages the economy of the EU. We are not in competition necessarily with other EU countries on this, although there are some questions about behaviour in the fishing industry where certain practices have been contrary to the interests of UK fishermen—the double-hulled Spanish vessels for illegal fishing, for example. They were found out and faced some penalties, but the UK has faced penalties as a result of not behaving properly in the fishing industry. A number of cases have been brought against UK fishing companies for malpractice. There is an EU dimension and an IMO dimension. They are not contrary, and anything that produces good governance is to be welcomed.

Julian Brazier: The hon. Gentleman is being very courteous in giving way but I think he has missed my point. This was an EU rule, not an IMO one. The non-EU registered ships were operating perfectly legally at a different level except on their visits to European ports. That is why, on the balance of probabilities, they thought they could get away without conforming to those levels. It creates a perverse incentive to leave EU registers.

Michael Connarty: I am sure that the Minister was listening to that and that the matter will come up. We would not want that to happen. There have always been scare stories about something that is done in Europe to provide better regulation and standards driving people out, but that is not necessarily the case. We do not give up good standards and practice just because we are worried someone will go somewhere else where they can cheat. Clearly we would not allow them to trade in European waters. The advantage of trading with 500 million people in Europe is attractive, so there are levers we can apply.
	The report refers to the importance of involving all parties in the consultation. We heard that Norway, although outside the EU, takes part in these consultations to help form the policy. Similarly, all of our devolved Administrations were involved in it. The report states that Scottish Ministers have considerable interests in the matter, and that of particular interest to Scotland is the protection of the marine environment and biological resources. The report names fisheries that were mentioned by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil). Welsh Ministers also have an extensive interest in the matter, with 70 per cent. of Welsh marine waters designated for their environmental quality and 40 per cent. of the territorial seas. The report also talks about Ministers from the Northern Ireland Assembly. It gives a good model for the Government for many other policy areas in future. If we make policy together by being involved in consultation, whether with partners outside the EU with a similar interest or those in the devolved Administrations, we will get better legislation.

Michael Weir: Does the report not also say that the Scottish Government did an additional memorandum because of particular interests in the marine environment which perhaps did not coincide entirely with the UK Government's position?

Michael Connarty: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is a Europe-watcher, from a Scottish perspective. Policy in Europe is made by compromise; by trying not to disadvantage others, but to get the largest advantage for the majority. That is how people get to vote for things, particularly with QMV.
	The hon. Gentleman knows that I have certain views about the common fisheries policy that may coincide with his, but it was not the Labour Government who sold out; it was the Conservative Government who sold out many years ago. It is very unlikely that anyone, apart from those with extreme views, would want to abolish the common fisheries policy. The point is how it is applied, whether it disadvantages others and whether it should only be those with marine and fishing interests who make the policy. Whether it is a wider EU matter will be debated. Should there ever come a time when there is an independent country in Scotland—

Angus MacNeil: It's coming.

Michael Connarty: The question then would be whether it refuses to join the EU because it could not get the common fisheries policy abolished. I am not going to invite the hon. Gentleman to reply. That question will remain until that comes about, should it ever do so, which I have no great wish for.
	The point is that when we involve, as we do involve, the maximum number of people to make policy, we should recognise that that is a good thing. However, it is always a problem if those involved are churlish and want to point score and not really make policy.

Alistair Carmichael: I will not detain the House for long this evening. I want to say a few brief words to register a degree of unease about the content of the documents before us.
	The Minister knows that I hold him in high regard, but I have to say to him gently that the speech that he read out tonight was just a little on the jargon-heavy side. Just occasionally, it strayed into the realms of the platitudinous. I do not blame him for that, because he was in fact reflecting the content of the documents that we are discussing. Perhaps I might quote for the House's benefit a few sentences from the Scrutiny Committee's report, some of which the Minister has already quoted. It states at paragraph 2.4:
	"The way that marine related policy is made would be changed so that, rather than being developed through compartmentalised dossiers, it would take an integrated form that recognised the relationships and interactions between different activities in the maritime sphere",
	whatever the "maritime sphere" is. It continues:
	"To this end, common tools in policy development would need to be used, synergetic approaches adopted and conflicts of interest avoided or resolved. In essence, the document is a grand plan to control the direction of often disparate but related policy strands under an umbrella of consistency of approach."
	I wanted to share those few sentences with the House. I should explain that I have a degree in law and a diploma in legal practice. I practised for a number of years as a qualified solicitor. I really thought that I knew a thing or two about the use of language to obscure rather than clarify meaning, but I realised on reading that that I was not a professional in the field; I was barely even a gifted amateur.
	My concern, which all here should have tonight, is that we sign up to these vague, rather jargon-heavy platitudes and then, when the devil comes from the detail and we say, "We don't like that", somebody turns round and says, "Ah no, you signed up to it. Here it is, and it was in the report that you all agreed." I am quite happy to agree and to commend the Minister on the progress that the Government have made, particularly in getting rid of the nonsense of an EU coastguard and the nonsense of an EU register. I give the Minister and his predecessor in particular, whom I hoped might be here tonight, credit for their achievements in that regard, but I am concerned that what we are doing—what is contained underneath all this jargon—is something of a political pig in a poke.

Angus MacNeil: Perhaps this is one of the platitudes that jumps out:
	"The Commission will...promote, within the forthcoming tourism initiative, coastal and maritime tourism".
	As we will soon be aware, those running coastal tourism operations will be hit when they will no longer be allowed to use red diesel. That is another example of a lack of joined-up thinking.

Alistair Carmichael: Indeed. In fact, that measure was determined—the House will forgive me if I am wrong—largely before the hon. Gentleman came into the House. I remember quizzing Treasury Ministers on a number of occasions, the hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey) in particular, about the Government's intentions, and it was always the same thing. It was always a case of, "Well, we don't know the detail of what is being proposed. We've got the whole jargon-laden proposal here, and we will make a decision once we have the detail." Once we had the detail, it was too late.
	The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) is right about the position that has emerged as a result of leisure craft no longer being allowed to use red diesel. It is a mess that adds nothing to the leisure industry, but it will be as important to his constituents as it is to mine. I suspect that it will gain not a single penny for the Treasury's coffers, and we will end up with something that costs more in its enforcement than it will ever bring in through revenue.
	My concern is that when one looks at the list of areas that are included in these papers, one sees a great many things that can be done at EU level, but which would be better done either at nation-state level or within the IMO. I am particularly concerned that we never seem to give any particular elbow to our involvement with the IMO. The potential for developing these areas in a meaningful way is immense. Let us consider some of the provisions envisaged for cutting pollution, including greenhouse gases, from ships. They are fine within an EU context, but I suspect that most of the shipping that operates within EU waters has very little connection with the EU.
	Given the situation that faced my constituents some 16 years ago, when a New York-owned, Panamanian-registered floating wreck, which was captained by a Greek, spilled oil over half our coastline, anything that the EU has done with regard to pollution coming from ships is pretty meaningless. The opportunity for real, meaningful change to avoid that sort of ecological disaster comes from meaningful enforcement; from taking hard action through the IMO against flags of convenience; from ensuring proper standards for the training of officers and crew; and from ensuring proper maintenance of shipping. There is far too much substandard shipping carrying oil around the world. That will be addressed only at IMO level, and anything we do within the EU will be meaningless at best, or counter-productive and damaging to our own shipping industry at worst.

Angus MacNeil: I just want to support what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Last week, I saw the Border Heather leaving Ardveenish in Barra. It carries fuel from Grangemouth around the coast of Scotland, and probably to the Orkneys and Shetlands too, and it is registered in the Isle of Man. As the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) said, this seems to be a great example of Commission creep.

Alistair Carmichael: I think that Commission creep is a slightly pejorative term, but I know the sentiment that underlies it, and I am not without sympathy. I put it no more strongly than that.
	I am sure the House would be disappointed if I sat down without making some reference to fishing. The report draws our attention to
	"an eco-system based approach to fishing, including the stopping of illegal fishing and environmentally damaging fishing practices".
	Nobody could take exception to that statement, but I would feel much more comfortable with it if it were to have more regard to, and would tie itself more firmly to, the regional elements that we have seen in recent years in the development of fishing policy and a system that involves fishermen, scientists and other stakeholders in the industry all working together. We need them to bring their expertise to bear to get a system that has credibility with fishermen, with scientists and with conservationists. At the moment, the CFP is none of those things.
	There is substantial opportunity for co-operation within the EU between maritime clusters, and that is one of the positives that the papers have identified. However, I wish to place on record my disappointment in one respect. Last weekend in Kirkwall we had a major conference on the future of maritime education, attended by representatives of the shipping industry and of academic bodies throughout Europe, indeed the world. It also included representatives of the IMO and even the EU. We did not, however, have a representative from the UK Government. The project that the conference sought to promote—the northern maritime university—could be a textbook example of co-operation between maritime clusters, but the UK Government simply did not care about it.
	Unless we take such issues on board, we will miss a huge opportunity for training the next generation of officers and officer cadets, which will be necessary as the shipping industry takes on the massive expansion that the Government say they expect. However, they could not be bothered to send one person to Kirkwall to learn more about it. That was a disappointment.

Katy Clark: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) who powerfully made the case for international regulation to tackle the pollution of our seas, and for the UK maritime industry. I shall be brief, because we are running out of time and I want to give the Minister an opportunity to reply to the many points that have been made. I suspect that many of those issues will be discussed again when we consider the long-awaited Marine Bill, which was discussed by the Joint Committee today. Hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies will be aware that there is also a Scottish marine Bill that will deal with many of these issues.
	I shall focus on the review of European Union law exemptions for the shipping and fishing industries, which I have raised previously. I know the Minister is aware that this issue has been raised in relation to the race relations legislation and the national minimum wage regulations. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland will know that the work force who serve the Orkney and Shetland isles on the lifeline ferries are not necessarily covered by the national minimum wage regulations, because they do not cover any of the non-domiciled, non-resident seafarers on all the ships and ferries that leave UK ports. Changes need to be made to UK legislation in that regard, but Europe has a strong role to play in the sector, given that many of the issues do not stop at UK territorial waters.
	The European Union is a major bloc, and one of the most civilised areas on the planet, and it is important that we say that we expect the European community to set the highest standards and to push internationally for higher standards all around the world. I think that that addresses some of the points made by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. There is not necessarily a conflict between the two. We have seafarers working on ferries that go out of British ports to other EU ports who earn as little as £1 or £1.50 an hour. I would be interested in the Minister's views about whether the directive is another way we can address that anomaly.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I am most grateful to hon. Members for their views on this new Commission approach to maritime development policy. We have had some good contributions to the discussion over the past hour or so.
	I am grateful to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) for his kind words and for the common ground between us. Indeed, there has been common ground between Members from virtually all parts of the House, but then, as the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) said, that was not going to be difficult given the lack of specifics. However, there was common ground notwithstanding the comments that were made earlier.
	The hon. Member for Canterbury raised several key points, the most important of which was about subsidiarity. I can reassure him that there is no shipping organisation in which the individual voices of maritime nations could be more effectively replaced than the European Union. I do not think that that could be clearer.
	The hon. Gentleman raised the question of the tonnage tax, as did the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), and asked for greater clarification. The Government welcomed the European Commission's decision to consult all member states on issues relating to state aid guidelines on maritime transport. We are working with like-minded member states to ensure that that is a meaningful exercise. In the light of the Commission's decision, this is an important opportunity. We have withdrawn our re-notification and will not proceed with the legislation to amend tonnage tax rules, which would have reduced the effectiveness and attractiveness of the tonnage tax, until the Commission has completed its consultation with member states.
	The Government are grateful for the fruitful dialogue with the UK shipping industry and will continue this engagement. All sides acknowledge the important role that tonnage tax has played in underpinning the success of the shipping industry and remain committed to the principles that the UK tonnage tax represents.
	The new Chairman of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman), raised the question of EU maritime space without barriers and the security implications. Ostensibly, this is a Customs admin simplification proposal, but more detail will be needed and the Government will look at all the implications of the proposal when it comes forward.
	My hon. Friend asked about clusters, which were also mentioned by the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). In England, a number of regional development agencies have already established organisations in their regions to bring together maritime manufacturing interests, such as Marine South West, Marine South East and the Midland Marine Alliance. The Government fully support those initiatives and we look forward to working with the European Commission to ensure that whatever proposals finally emerge will add value to the current arrangements.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Ms Clark) raised the issue of support for fishermen in local communities. The common fisheries policy will remain the key measure for fisheries management decisions across the EU.
	You must forgive me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I have run out of time. I will write to hon. Members about the issues that they have raised. I endorse the Government's approach to these documents.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House takes note of European Union documents No. 14631/07 and Addenda 1-5, Commission Communication, An Integrated Maritime Policy for the European Union and No. 14176/07, Commission Staff Working Document on Maritime Clusters; and endorses the Government's approach to these documents.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Building Societies

That the draft Building Societies (Financial Assistance) Order 2008, which was laid before this House on 3rd April, be approved. —[Ms Diana R. Johnson.]
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Consumer Protection

That the draft Compensation (Claims Management Services) (Amendment) Regulations 2008, which were laid before this House on 22nd April, be approved. —[Ms Diana R. Johnson.]
	 Question agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Northern Ireland

That the draft Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland Consequential Amendments) Order 2008, which was laid before this House on 30th April, be approved. —[Ms Diana R. Johnson.]
	 The House divided: Ayes 279, Noes 6.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Northern Ireland

That the draft Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008, which was laid before this House on 30th April, be approved. —[Ms Diana R. Johnson.]
	 Question agreed to.

PETITIONS

Southend Driving Test Centre

James Duddridge: I wish to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Southend concerning the proposed closure of Southend driving test centre. The petition has attracted more than 3,000 signatures since February and was co-ordinated by Southend and District Driving Instructors Association. It reads:
	The Petition of the residents of Southend.
	Declares that the residents of Southend strongly oppose the closure of Southend Driving Test Centre, which would mean that local residents would have to travel an unreasonable distance to take their driving tests.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon the Secretary of State for Transport to do all within her power to prevent the closure of Southend Driving Test Centre and ensure that a full and transparent public consultation is conducted should a closure be proposed in the future.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000195]

Post Office Closures (Ceredigion)

Mark Williams: I wish to present a petition with the signatures of just over 3,000 people from across the Ceredigion constituency representing 14 rural communities which, in our view, will be adversely affected by the Post Office's network change programme. Those 14 post offices will know their fate shortly, and I hope that the Post Office and the Government will take note of the strength of feeling on this issue. The petition states:
	The Humble Petition of the people of Ceredigion
	Sheweth,
	That the closure of Post Offices in Ceredigion would cause considerable hardship for many people living in scattered rural communities, deprive residents of invaluable services, both material and social, would force those people to travel to alternative Post Offices, often several miles or more away, and would leave those without access to a car without an easily accessible Post Office.
	Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Government to cancel plans to close Post Offices across Ceredigion
	And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.
	[P000202]

SOUTHEND DRIVING TEST CENTRE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Ms Diana R. Johnson.]

James Duddridge: I am most grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of the Driving Standard Agency's proposed closure of Southend driving test centre, to which 3,000 people have objected in the petition that I presented to the House a few moments ago. It is a serious subject for all people in Southend who are considering taking their test or have children who are likely to want to take their test in the Southend area.
	The proposed closure of a driving test centre is not a new topic in this House. On 21 May, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) held a Westminster Hall debate about the proposed closure of a test centre in his constituency, and on 13 May my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) joined a debate on the closure of a test centre in his area. Those changes relate to an European Union directive coming into effect in September, which will change the content of motorcycle tests across the EU by introducing certain manoeuvres that require off-road testing facilities. I do not intend to dwell on the merits of that, but it is a matter of fact that that has happened. Southend driving test centre is situated on Prittlewell chase, deep within the heart of Southend, and has no space for such a facility. The Driving Standards Agency has therefore proposed that all bike and car test operations be moved to a new so-called multi-purpose test centre in Basildon, some 14 miles away from Southend. That does not sound like a long distance, but in fact it can be a 45-minute to one-hour trip.
	My feeling and that of several colleagues is that one size does not fit all, and that the Government are imposing a solution on Southend that does not fit. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) and I have been campaigning against such a move. My hon. Friend has raised this on the Floor of the House and in written questions to the Minister, and I am most grateful for that. My close parliamentary neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) has also raised it in his constituency and in a number of other ways. Although the test centre is situated in the constituency of Rochford and Southend, East, which I have the pleasure to represent, it is very close to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West; in fact, if it were another 100 yd further up the road, it would be in his constituency. Given the additional time that has been created for this important debate, I hope that both of my hon. Friends will be able to catch your eye later on in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	I would like to concentrate on why I am against the closure of the Southend driving test centre, and my primary reason is population. I ask the Minister to address those concerns, which I have not seen addressed in depth in other debates. I will also mention issues associated with time, finance and the environmental impact of the proposed move. The Driving Standards Agency's code of practice states that in towns where the population density is greater than 1,250 people per sq km, learner drivers should have to travel no further than seven miles to a test centre. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West solicited that information in a detailed answer to a parliamentary question of Thursday 22 May. Southend is the largest town in Essex. According to the Office for National Statistics' 2006 mid-year population estimate, its population was recorded as 3,829 people per sq km, and the Minister, from previous discussions in previous roles, will know that my hon. Friends and I regard that as a major underestimate.
	That population is already more than three times the recommended level discovered by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West in the answer to his parliamentary question. The Driving Standards Agency would be breaking its code of practice by having a test centre serve a population density three times higher than the recommended level and at double the recommended distance that learners should travel. It is a totally unsatisfactory situation. What is the point of having such guidelines if someone in the Department—I am unsure whom—is going to overrule them flagrantly?
	The current test centre is ideally located in Southend. The moderately sized road that the centre is on has five secondary schools, four of which have sixth forms, meaning that up to 1,000 students in any one year may want to take their test there. The proposed move will be a major inconvenience for them. The university of Essex is developing its new campus in Southend, so another 9,000—maybe more—people of typical learner driver age will be based just around the corner.
	Population density is my key objection to the proposal, but I am also concerned about the distance to the new test centre and the time it will take drivers to get there. They will be travelling not only for their test but, on other occasions, to acquaint themselves with the test centre area. If they do not do that, I suggest to the Minister that they will be at a fundamental disadvantage. I was in that position as a 17-year-old, having to travel between 45 minutes and an hour, and I had to make that journey four or five times to acquaint myself with the test area. That certainly did put me at a disadvantage and I am concerned that young students taking their test in Southend will be at a disadvantage because they do not know the roads and the area around the test centre in Basildon. Indeed, there is no reason why they should be familiar with that area.
	The two roads connecting Basildon to Southend are the A127 and A13, which are normally heavily congested. The journey could take up to an hour, and in summer it can be an awful lot worse. There are many tourist facilities in Southend; many people go there for a day trip and the roads become heavily congested. I am particularly concerned for constituents from the Shoeburyness area or, just outside the boundaries of Southend, those in the Rochford district, who already have to travel a number of miles to get to the current test centre. The journey will be even further than 14 miles for them.
	The extra distance will come at a price. People offering driving tests and practice in the new test centre area will not do so for free. It will take extra time to get there. Costs are already very high for aspirant learner drivers and rising fuel prices and fuel tax are making a significant financial impact. The proposed closure is a further blow to young people who want to be socially mobile, and who want to get to employment and education opportunities. The whole process will be more and more expensive. One company that I have spoken to has already had to increase its rate for a two-hour lesson from £38 to £45, and I am sure that the cost will increase further. Equally, a number of people from Southend will decide that they want to receive all their instruction in Basildon. I can see sensible reasons for doing that, but I am concerned about the loss of employment for driving instructors in the Southend area or the costs of having to relocate nearer to the driving test centre.
	Let me deal with a separate issue, which has been touched on in other debates, but which I should like to expand on in more detail: protecting the environment and our carbon footprint. It is important—the Government recognise this—to decrease vehicle emissions, yet the proposal will put cars on the road for longer, polluting further the Southend-to-Basildon area, which is already subject to considerable pollution along the main roads. At a time when the Government are trying to demonstrate their green credentials and sound like they are doing lots, the proposal seems to go in the opposite direction.
	Will the Minister say whether an environmental impact assessment of the change has been conducted that considered more than the additional mileage? In terms of both the environment and time spent travelling, 14 miles is not a long way, but if a driver spends most of the way sitting in a traffic jam, pumping out more fumes, there is a much greater impact. I have seen no evidence that the issue has been considered to date, so I would be reassured if the Minister provided that information.
	The proposals have met strong objection from local instructors and residents. As someone who does not solicit a large number of petitions, I can confirm that it is quite rare to receive a petition from constituents with more than 3,000 names. That shows quite strong opposition from local residents. I was first alerted to the issue last November and have since met a number of driving instructors, including the very good John Ashton, who represents the Southend and District Driving Instructors Association. John spoke to me not as an individual, but as a representative of the entire association—some driving instructors did not want to be named and were concerned not to be disadvantaged by the test centre management by coming out against the proposal. John emphasised that he was speaking on behalf of all the driving instructors in the association—I believe that means all the driving instructors—and nobody supported the Government's proposal.
	In the very full parliamentary answer that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West received, the Minister noted that he had received 317 letters of objection. I found that difficult to comprehend, when compared with the petition of 3,000 people that was presented to me for onward presentation to the House. An awful lot of my constituents—and, I suspect, those of other hon. Members—have written directly to the Driving Standards Agency, not to the Minister. I wish that they had bombarded the Minister with letters early on. I know that that would have meant extra work for the Minister and his private office, but they would perhaps have been alerted to the severity of the issue and the strength of public feeling, because I suspect that 317 letters to a Minister's private office is not an enormous number. If the Minister could indicate how much correspondence the Driving Standards Agency has received and what the overall level of objection to the proposals has been, that might put this debate in its proper context.
	Let me turn to a potential resolution. I do not want to tell the Minister, "Leave it as is—we don't want to do anything; I don't want any change." Rightly or wrongly, there is EU legislation and we have to comply with it. I was disappointed that the Driving Standards Agency had not consulted Southend borough council. I have spoken to the chief executive, Rob Tinlin, who was keen to engage with the Driving Standards Agency and use alternatives—either a multi-purpose test centre in Southend or, given the advantages of the existing site for cars, separating the two centres. One does not go to a test centre and say, "Can I take my car and motorcycle test at the same time?" Although they are both modes of transport, the tests do not necessarily have to be located in the same place.
	The chief executive is willing to consider a number of sites. On my way in, I was explaining the issue to the Doorkeeper, who suggested Southend pier, which is the longest pier in the world at 1.33 miles. It has seen motorcycle activity in the past, with the wheel of death, but I do not think that it is a particularly good option. However, there are several options in the Southend area, and the local council is happy to sit down with the Minister, his Department and the DSA—whoever it takes—to find a more equitable solution that will work for local people and the Department.
	I should like the Minister to respond to the points raised in the debate and, ultimately, for us all to sit down with the DSA to establish what can be done for the benefit of the people of Rayleigh, Rochford and Southend to keep a decent driving test centre in the area that can be reached easily by our constituents and future constituents who, quite rightly, want to pass their driving test in their own area.

David Amess: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) on securing this Adjournment debate. All that needs to be said has been said, but in spite of that, I want the Minister to hear directly from me—another voice. In speaking, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), and it also good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Goodwill) here.
	The Minister and I are united in our support of West Ham. On that basis alone, I ask him to tear up the brief given to him by his hard-working officials, which will tell him, "No, Minister; no, Minister; no Minister!" I want this Minister to say yes. He has been very courteous in responding to the points that I raised in April, when he gave me a full answer, but the proposal is totally unsatisfactory. As someone who has been privileged to represent the real Basildon constituency for 14 years, and now Southend, West, I am in a prime position to share with the Minister the ramifications of this proposal. I ask him to stand up not only for Britain, but for Southend, regarding this European Union directive. I have never heard of anything so crazy. Because of motorcycles, all our motorists are going to suffer.

Robert Goodwill: In Scarborough, motorists can still take their tests there, but motorcyclists will have to travel 40 miles to Hull or Darlington rather than take their tests in Scarborough. So, there is every reason why motor testing should be in a separate place to motorcycle testing.

David Amess: My hon. Friend has got to the heart of the matter, which saves me from enlarging on that point, and I hope that the Minister will respond to it.
	We should stand up to this ridiculous directive. I have nothing against motorcyclists, but why should motorists in Southend suffer as a result of the directive?
	So far, four of my five children have passed their driving tests, and their father has, for better or worse, been involved in assisting them with their driving. Because I know Basildon so well, I have driven there with them. Given that we lived in the town for so long, we know the roads there extremely well, and I tell the Minister that there is no comparison between road conditions in Basildon and those in Southend. Basildon, which was the first and biggest new town in the country, was not built in the expectation that people would have the number of motor cars that they now have—often up to three. The roads are very narrow and conditions there are entirely different.
	It is wrong that the young people in the area that my hon. Friends and I represent, who will be learning to drive in Southend and primarily on those local roads, given that driving lessons are so expensive now, will then have to take their tests in Basildon. The Minister will probably think that that is a silly argument, and that people should surely be capable of driving anywhere, but the people from Basildon taking their test there will be very familiar with the local driving conditions, while the young people from Southend will not. Those young people will undoubtedly be placed at a huge disadvantage. Through driving with my children, I have experienced the practical side of these matters at first hand.
	In his courteous letter to me, the Minister drew my attention to the guidelines, but I want to hear how he could possibly justify this decision. The DSA is clearly in violation of the code of practice on written consultations, which states:
	"In more densely populated areas of the country where the population is equal to or greater than 1,250 persons per square kilometre, the practical test centres should be located so that most customers travel no more than 7 miles to a DTC."
	Under the proposals, they would have to travel double that distance: 14 miles. That is simply unacceptable. I get fed up with these consultation processes. We have had a consultation, and no one agreed with the proposals, yet they were ignored. That is not democracy; it is simply a diktat. We should not insult the general public by saying that we are holding a consultation, if we are simply going to listen to what they say and then completely ignore them.
	The criteria that I have just mentioned were set out in the Minister's response to my question of 22 May. Southend's population density easily exceeds the criteria: we have 3,829 people per sq km. In a letter from the Minister, he says that the proposed Basildon site
	"is 10 miles from the existing centre at Southend-on-Sea".
	I dispute that; I say that it is 14 miles away. In any case, the Minister admits that the seven-mile limit has been exceeded. The DSA now wishes to violate its own guidelines and relocate to this multi-centre, which is totally unacceptable. This disaster for the residents of our constituencies is being brought about simply to comply with the directive, and it is totally wrong that the motorists are being placed in an inferior position to the motorcyclists because of that.
	The Minister and I love history. The driving test centre in Southend has been there for 60 years. It is not a fly-by-night set-up; all the infrastructure is in place. We have several long-established driving schools there, and they are all used to the test centre and greatly appreciate the facility being there. The opening of the Southend campus of the university of Essex will attract numerous extra students who want to learn to drive. It is not always the case that, as soon as someone is of age, they get a provisional licence and start driving, but the Minister should bear in mind that we are going for a huge expansion of higher education in Southend, and that that will bring in even more business.
	The move to Basildon will mean added costs, and emissions will increase. There will be additional wear and tear on the instructors' tuition vehicles. It will also place a burden on a route that already suffers from congestion. My hon. Friends have already mentioned the extra traffic that would have to travel along the A127, which is clearly finding it difficult to cope at the moment. The stand taken by all interested groups could not have been clearer.
	Southend and District Driving Instructors Association has been resolutely opposed to the plan from the beginning. It has held rallies and written letters of objection. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East said, its petition attracted more than 3,000 signatures. Those signatures are not from Disraeli—
	 It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
	 Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Ms Diana R. Johnson.]

David Amess: As my hon. Friend said, the 3,000 signatures are not from Disraeli or Queen Victoria; they are the genuine signatures of people who will be badly affected by this proposal.
	The position of the local community has been clear throughout the 12 weeks of the consultation process and it is no exaggeration to say that the DSA has been bombarded with objections. It refused requests from the association even to extend the consultation period. In this time of climate change and concerns surrounding energy consumption, the extra journeys and the carbon output are in complete contrast with the Government's sustainability agenda, which my hon. Friends and I support.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East has already mentioned the important issue of road safety and it is unfair on the residents of Southend suddenly to introduce them to new conditions with which they are unfamiliar. Southend council has done an excellent job in flagging up the concerns of local residents, although I regret to say that the feedback received during the consultation period was perhaps not as robust as might have been hoped. There has been some collation of figures and a submission has been made to the Minister to consider the approval of the agency proposal, taking into account the views expressed, but I must ask again, what has been the point of going out to consultation?
	I end with these thoughts for the Minister. The Southend centre is an excellent resource for local people and its closure would genuinely cause severe difficulty for all our constituents. Given that the driving test is not all that easy to pass in any case, this proposal puts a further hurdle in front of them. The move to keep the driving test centre in Southend is supported by the Conservatives, the Labour party, the Liberals and the independents.
	I hope that the Minister will ignore his brief and give me and my hon. Friends hope this evening that, given what my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby said, he will carefully consider what has happened in other areas: the motorcyclists have been given an opportunity to do their bit, as has been suggested, but the motorists remain at the existing centre.
	I say finally to the Minister that this is not a speech against Basildon. When I was the Member of Parliament for that area, I saved the accident and emergency unit, stopped the relocation of maternity services, stopped school closures and intervened over the railway line and services there, so I would be the last person to turn this into a Basildon versus Southend issue. It is not that at all. I want the best for Basildon, but above all I want the very best for motorists in Southend, which means keeping the test centre where it is.

Mark Francois: I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) on securing this important Adjournment debate and, if I may say so, on introducing it so ably. I also congratulate him on presenting a petition bearing the signatures of 3,000 people protesting very clearly against what the Government propose. I have been in the House for longer than my hon. Friend, but I believe that the largest number of names on any petition that I have ever presented was about 1,300. I imagine that 3,000 is a considerable number. I hope the Minister will take account of the strength of local feeling, which I shall now attempt to echo on behalf of my constituents.
	I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) on his apposite contribution. He is in a unique position in that, as he said, he has represented both Basildon and his present constituency. As the proposal is to move the test centre from Southend to Basildon, he could be said to have addressed the issue from both ends. He knows both areas very well, and I hope that the Minister will give weight to what he has said as well.
	It is a pleasure to see my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Goodwill) in his place. I know that he takes an interest in these matters, and he gave a pertinent example from his constituency tonight.
	I too have constituents who may be affected by the move. Some are potential students, while others are instructors working from the existing test centre who have written to me urging me to raise the issue. I am grateful for the opportunity to do so on their behalf.
	Let me ask the Minister a few specific questions. The first concerns the European Union directive that lies at the heart of the change. Was it passed on the basis of unanimity, or by qualified majority voting? I think we should have that on the record. It is often argued that Europe has no real impact on our day-to-day lives, but this is a perfect example of its having such an impact. A directive—in effect, a European law—was passed, and some time later we have seen a change "on the ground". I consider it important for the House to know the background to that change, the method by which the directive was passed, and the Government's position on it.
	There is also an environmental point to be made. If the Minister is at all familiar with the roads that link Basildon and Southend, the A127 and the A13, he will know that they can become very busy. When the traffic is light, it is possible to travel at a reasonable pace between the two towns, but when it is at all heavy, it can take a long time to get out of Southend and then down to Basildon. If the standard driving lesson lasts an hour, it is likely that, for a fair part of the day, by the time a student has worked his way out of Southend, perhaps been picked up by the instructor at home, got on to one of the two main roads and reached Basildon, the bulk of that hour will have gone. A lesson lasting at least two hours will be necessary to familiarise the student with the roads around the test centre. That will add to the costs incurred by the student, and the costs that instructors will have to charge.
	That last point is particularly pertinent. The service provided by instructors for their students will become more expensive. As I think the Minister will agree—without our getting involved in a debate about global oil prices—we all know that instructors' costs are rising because the cost of petrol has increased considerably. That imposes additional pressure on the instructors, who must raise their fees to cover the cost of the petrol. Now they will sometimes have to make their lessons longer, and more expensive, in order to convey their students to the area where they will practise on the test route. That is a practical, down-to-earth point, and I hope that the Minister will take it on board.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East said, the Essex university campus in Southend has been something of a local success story. As a result, thousands of people who are at the prime age for learning to drive are moving to the area. The Government therefore find themselves in the rather odd position of seeing a large number of potential driving students moving to Southend while they are proposing to move the test centre to Basildon. My hon. Friend's point bears repetition and I ask the Minister to take it on board.
	It is not appropriate to make this a partisan debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West pointed out that all the local parties in the Southend area are opposed to the move so I am not trying to politicise the debate. However, there is a wider issue about the degree to which the Government are getting their message across in the south of England. This could provide the Government with an opportunity to claim that they really are listening to opinion in the south and are taking on points that were put to them. I will be no more partisan than that but the Minister, an old hand in this place, will follow my point. I dangle that not entirely partisan inducement before him and I hope he will listen to it.
	At the risk of making an emergency stop, I will halt there. We have a bit of extra time this evening and it is appropriate that we give that time to the Minister so that he has the maximum time to reply. I conclude by saying that this is an important issue locally. A lot of people have taken it seriously and a petition of 3,000 names should not be ignored lightly. I hope that he will take all that into account when he replies.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I congratulate the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) on securing the debate on this important issue and on providing a platform for his hon. Friends the Members for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) and for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Goodwill), who is his party's Front-Bench spokesman and appearing under a different guise; quite an accomplishment at the end of a long parliamentary day.
	The hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East stated that the Driving Standards Agency proposal for the future of certain driving test centres had already been raised in the House. In those previous debates, the recent and proposed changes to the delivery of driving tests were set out and, for reasons of brevity, I will not cover all that ground again; clearly it is not necessary.
	Developing a new national network of driving test centres has been agreed by Ministers not only to facilitate the new European requirements for practical driving and riding tests, but because the new requirements set higher standards intended to provide driving tests that are more relevant to modern driving conditions. We published our "Safe driving for life" consultation document only four weeks ago. The document raises the question of the abject failure rates for first-time driving test candidates and the fact that we are killing so many people on the roads, particularly young people and motorcyclists.
	These new European standards support our domestic strategy for reducing road casualties, which are running at more than 3,000 people killed and 30,000 people seriously injured each year. I regret that I am not in a position to answer the question of the hon. Member for Rayleigh on the voting protocol that passed this directive, but I undertake to research the matter and to write to him and his hon. Friends with the answer.
	As hon. Members know, the new centres are based on updated features that will provide modern facilities for local people. The proposed developments have been designed to create attractive buildings that will fit comfortably into the local environment. They are fully compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and also support the Government's wider sustainability agenda.
	The new centres, known as multi-purpose test centres or MPTCs, will be suitable for the delivery of practical driving tests for learner car drivers and motorcyclists. Where possible, some will also be used for the delivery of lorry and bus driving tests. The DSA has concluded that between 40 and 50 MPTCs would be required to meet existing service standard criteria. However, to maximise population coverage and minimise the number of candidates who have to travel long distances, it is seeking to develop around 60 MPTCs across the country. The DSA owns or leases more than 400 practical driving test centres—the type described by the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby. Only in a few exceptions have any of these proved suitable for the development of a full MPTC, so a programme of land acquisition and construction was initiated in 2005.

James Duddridge: I must admit that, on reading the background before the debate, I was confused about why this was being proposed. To me, it seems completely illogical. Is this a cost-cutting exercise? There are 400 sites—is the Minister just trying to realise some cash?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The answer to that is no. However, the DSA is a cost-neutral organisation, so the money that has to be raised will have to be paid for by test fees and transferred to members of the public. Therefore, this is an exercise in managing the cost of these new centres.
	Let me deal with that issue now. To date, the DSA has acquired 41 sites. The provision of a national network of MPTCs is expected to cost about £71 million. That cost will largely be recovered through increased fees paid by driving test candidates. As an organisation that relies on test fee income for the provision of its services, the DSA needs to ensure that they are delivered cost-effectively and that avoid unnecessary expenditure. The agency therefore closely examines how it delivers its services and seeks greater efficiencies in the way it conducts its business. This includes reviewing existing driving test centre provision to ensure that, while the service standard is maintained, there is no wasteful over-provision of service.
	As I have already mentioned, the DSA has certain service standards that need to be met where possible. In more densely populated areas of the country—all the hon. Gentlemen present have mentioned this issue—where the population density is equal to or greater than 1,250 persons per sq km, most candidates should not have to travel more than seven miles to a driving test centre. I have heard the comments of the hon. Gentlemen on this question, and I will ensure that the statistics they quoted are fully taken into account as part of the consultation exercise.
	The existing driving test centre at Southend is located in the offices of the Department for Work and Pensions. This is a 1960s building that does not offer the modern facilities that we try to provide for customers and staff wherever possible. There are also concerns that, if the planned redevelopment in the immediate vicinity compromised its suitability as a test centre, the DSA would need to consider relocation for that reason, irrespective of developments in Basildon.
	The DSA has considered how best to meet the needs of driving test candidates in the Southend area. It is proposing to move driver testing in the area to a new MPTC facility at Basildon, some 10 miles away, as has been outlined. The Basildon facility would have the capacity to absorb the demand from Southend without compromising waiting time targets, if acceptable. The relocation of the Southend facility to the Basildon MPTC would ensure maximum utilisation of it and improve the facilities available to candidates and staff in the Basildon, Southend-on-Sea and surrounding areas.
	As the distance to the alternative facility exceeds the travel distance criterion applicable to the Southend area, the DSA has undertaken a 12-week public consultation, seeking the views of its customers and other interested parties. The consultation period ended on 9 May and the DSA is considering the responses received. I point out to the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East that a final decision has not yet been taken. I know that the chief executive, Rosemary Thew, is aware of this debate and will ensure that the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, including the environmental impact and the question of consultation with the local authority, are all taken into account.
	I have listened to the arguments about the risks from the A13 and A127.

David Amess: My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) and I might have misheard the Minister, but we thought that he referred to planned development either side of the existing centre. This is news to us. I do not understand where he has got that from.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I have been referring to the information that I have in my brief. I know that the hon. Gentleman was very keen to encourage me to tear up my brief, and I can assure him that I am not going there. In all honesty, I do not have to, because my brief says that, although the consultation ended on 9 May, the process has not concluded and this debate will form part of the chief executive's consideration. I shall supply details of what is included in my brief in respect of the extant facilities.

James Duddridge: Perhaps I could help the Minister by describing the area. There is no chance of any development, because there is a hospital next door, and the area contains a river that will not be built over and a school playing field. I believe that the Government have legislated against building on that. The point that he made might well pertain to other test centres, but it does not pertain to this one, unless he knows something that we do not—although he has said that he has no extra information.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I am sorry that I am not in a position to give additional information now, but I shall certainly supply that, so that the hon. Gentleman can scrutinise that which I have been given in my brief to explain the background to this issue.
	Arguments have been made about the risks of the A13 and A127, and questions have been asked about whether people would be at a disadvantage and whether people are suitably prepared because of the different environments. I am not readily persuaded that that is necessarily relevant to the matter under consideration. The DSA and the Department advocate "Safe driving for life", and I would expect driving on such roads to be included in the latter part of a candidate's training regime in any case. It has to be preferable that experience is gained on such roads when the candidates are accompanied by an experienced instructor, rather than when they are unaccompanied novices and possibly driving immediately after they have passed their test.
	We also do not support the view that learner drivers need regularly to practise driving in the area close to the test centre. That is not a sound argument for deciding where to locate local driving test centres. Experience should be gained on a variety of roads, and in a variety of traffic conditions and locations to prepare pupils for not only their test but their future driving career. Visits to the test centre need only be, and should only be, for pre-test familiarisation.
	I am not for one second suggesting that instructors in the Southend area are taking candidates around the test course only to familiarise them with it. I am sure that people with integrity are delivering the training in the Southend area. However, in certain parts, we suspect that what I have described is exactly what is happening—people are taught how to pass the test and they are not taught how to drive. One of the big issues that we have raised in the training-for-life approach is our seeking to change the module. Instead of the candidate demonstrating that they are able mechanically to handle a vehicle, we are saying that they should show us that they can drive the car. So, the examiner will not get into the car with the candidate and say, "Go to the end of the road and turn left, and then go to the end and take the first right." Rather, they will get into the car and ask to be taken to the local railway station, the local hospital or the local football ground, whichever involves a well-signposted route along which the candidate would be expected to demonstrate the skills of driving, rather than the training. That is the kind of issue that is being consulted upon at the moment.
	In the interests of road safety, driving instructors should be teaching their pupils to drive safely and confidently, not simply to follow known test routes. I would point out that the DSA's database confirms that some customers from the Southend area choose to take their driving tests at the Brentwood, Tilbury and Chelmsford test centres, and that the Southend test centre attracts customers from the Basildon area. Therefore, many driving test candidates already use the major roads in the area.
	The hon. Gentleman will be well aware of the difficulty of striking the right balance between the provision of a satisfactory level of public service and the cost that service incurs. I did say to him that this is not a cost-cutting exercise, but I have explained the background to the costs involved.

Mark Francois: I am not opposed in principle to candidates getting some experience of driving on arterial roads, but I do not think that the Minister has addressed the issue of the transit time involved in getting from Southend to Basildon under these proposed new arrangements. He has also not dealt with how that would, in practice, be likely to extend the lessons considerably, and how it would therefore extend the costs to students and increase what the instructors would have to charge. Will he attempt to address those matters, because they are important?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I am happy to do so.

James Duddridge: I just wish to ask the Minister to return to the issue of cost. He has asserted that this is not a cost-cutting exercise, but if the number of sites is reduced from 400 to 60, 340 sites will be freed up. The Southend site is one of the smallest sites, but it would be worth several million pounds. If the average site is worth £1 million, that is £340 million. The phrase "cost-cutting" is emotive, but I am sure that those involved would wish us to put it to the Minister that cost is a principal driver behind this, rather than the wish to provide good service to the customer. If this was a private sector organisation, it might take a slightly different view.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this is not a cost-cutting exercise. We will not close all the test centres, only some, because of the requirement to improve facilities. A mix of arrangements is in place across the country. Some sites are leased; others are not. There is a requirement for additional land for off-road testing for motorcycles, and the £71 million I mentioned earlier is a cost that the DSA has to match. We are not, therefore, talking about a cost-cutting exercise.
	The hon. Member for Rayleigh made the point about the cost of additional lessons and travelling for the test. In our consultation document on driver training and testing, we have mentioned that this will be a cost-neutral exercise, on the basis that it costs some £1,500 to pass a test. A small minority of people pass their test first time. If we train drivers to a better standard, perhaps through some additional lessons, they will not have to have a second test or a second series of lessons. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, and the insurance companies are very interested in drivers being passed to a higher standard, because if novice drivers have fewer crashes—a disproportionate number of crashes involve young drivers and some are killed because many of them think that they are invulnerable—the insurance companies will not have to charge the astronomic premiums that they charge young drivers in their first year. That will come if we can demonstrate that we are training people to a higher standard, that they are safer drivers who have fewer crashes and that they can be trusted. Employers would also be able to take young people on with greater confidence and would not have to undertake in-house training, which many companies do at present because they do not trust the driver-training regime. Given the failure figures and the 3,000 deaths, we all want to see safer drivers.
	I cannot assure hon. Members that Southend will stay open, but I can say that the points that they have raised will be communicated to the DSA. Senior management will read  Hansard and may be watching at the moment, because they know that the debate is taking place. They will be able to observe the strength of feeling and they will also be aware of the 3,000 signature petition presented tonight. They are aware of the correspondence, because they have told me about the hundreds of letters that they have received. They are aware that the consultation exercise is necessary because they are outwith their own guidelines on density, and they know that they have to demonstrate to the satisfaction of an objective observer that it has been done properly.
	I cannot give the hon. Members the answer that they want, but I can give them the assurance that this is an objective exercise and will be done properly. I will get back to them in due course on the issues on which I said I would give further answers.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.